4 
be considerably increased. If ‘“spouty” or springy land is to be 
used, a thorough under-draining will alone secure the requisite dry- 
ness of soil, that is indispensable to a healthful and fruitful orchard. 
No one, therefore, should waste his money for fruit trees, to plant 
upon lands so entirely unprepared, as to render his cost and labor 
at best a doubtful experiment. For, to set trees like so many 
posts, into a soil without any suitable preparation, is but mocking 
akind Providence, and securing an inglorious and unfruitful de- 
feat. The very evident fact, that the elements for tree growth, are 
not as plentiful in our prairie soil as in that of the heavily tim- 
bered lands of our Eastern homes, should lead to an entirely differ- 
ent and more thorough preparation of our grounds for orchards 
and fruit gardens. 
Examp.es.—In my own vicinity, and in Northeastern lowa gen- 
erally, in which I have traveled extensively, I have closely ob- 
served the results of different preparations and after-treatment of 
orchards and orchard lands ; and, aside from the losses caused by 
planting unacclimated trees, and unadapted varieties, I have found 
the chief causes of failures, in attempts to raise good and fruitful 
orchards, to be the results of a premature planting in an unpre- 
pared soil, and a starving neglect of them after they had made an 
attempt to survive the transplanting. 
My own orchard, planted with a hundred Eastern trees in 1856, 
on elevated land, deeply plowed and highly manured, was replanted 
in 1858 with my own grown trees, (all but ten of the first planting 
having gradually died out,) is now as healthy and vigorously grow- 
ing, as any orchard I ever saw East or West. 
It is but slightly protected from the fierce winds that come upon 
it over miles of uninterrupted prairie, the manuring of the entire 
ground having been often repeated and no manure being placed at 
any time near the trees, except by its broad-cast scattering. It is 
now becoming as fruitful as is desirable at its present age, and not 
a borer, or other destructive insect has come nigh them. 
No washing of the trees, or extra care of any sort, has been be- 
stowed upon them, except a vigorous cultivation of the land—rais- 
ing strawberries with other small fruits and garden vegetables 
thereon—and giving the trees a very limited amount of pruning. 
Indeed, in that last regard, they have had the benefit a very 
thorough “letting alone!” But one solitary case of failure has 
