150 
the business man. Few of us can afford 
to be reformers or philanthropists. 
It pays, in theory, to sell good goods 
rather than poor ones. It pays, ethically, 
to do right rather than wrong. It pays, 
to some extent, by being advertised as 
progressive, or which is generally the 
case, as a crank. I admit that this is its 
best feature, commercially. 
It does not pay when the majority of 
planters, encouraged by the facetious and 
skeptical attitude of some leading horti- 
cultural journals, regard it as a dose of 
nurserymen’s buncombe, or species of 
humbuggery. 
It does not pay when the majority of 
planters take little or no interest in plant 
breeding, and even decline permission to 
examine and mark trees for buds. 
It does not pay whenever the planter 
who professes faith in pedigreed stock 
refuses absolutely to pay one cent more 
for such trees, although that would not 
compensate for the great added expense 
of procuring buds from trees entitled to 
be called “pedigreed.” 
It might be made to pay handsomely, 
both nurseryman and planter, if the two 
would work in unison in the effort to 
improve the standard of our fruits. 
There are growers, of course, who 
would do this, as there are also nursery- 
men who would seize the opportunity to 
advertise their stock by using the term 
“pedigreed,” without the shadow of reason 
for doing so justly. The work, at best, 
could be but very gradual, although I 
have already seen a nursery firm adver- 
tising “pedigreed” apple trees for sale 
by the million! 
Personally, I believe the work can only 
be done practically in a small way by 
individual orchardists co-operating with 
some neighboring nurseryman, and thus 
actually propagating some known and 
fixed bud variation. 
LEONARD COATES, 
Morganhill, Cal. 
LAYING OUT THE ORCHARD 
The Orchard Chart 
Assuming that the decision has been 
reached as to the general plan of the 
orchard, it is better, before active opera- 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
tions are begun, to prepare an orcharg 
chart drawn to scale on heavy paper with 
ink with a point or cross for each tree 
with the name of the variety along the 
line of each row, if more than one vari. 
ety is planted. There are several advan- 
tages in this method. One is that if 
mistakes are made they are more easily 
corrected on paper than on the ground 
after work is begun; another is, that 
the whole plan of the orchard can be 
seen at any time, and will be useful for 
future reference. Further, if a record 
or a chart is made the labels can be re. 
moved from the trees, which is somewhat 
important because frequently these labels 
attached to the tree cut the bark, pre- 
vent the flow of sap, and damage the tree 
in its future growth. The chart with 
the place and name of each variety is 
better than labels on the trees because 
it is an instrument to which reference 
can be made at any time in describing 
the land if it should be offered for sale; 
in bookkeeping, if the profits of certain 
trees are to be recorded; in replanting, if 
some trees die; and in grafting. 
GRANVILLE LOWTHER 
Systems of Planting 
The most important thing to be consid- 
ered in laying out an orchard is the equal 
distribution of the trees. There are sev- 
eral well-defined systems, but only four 
need to be considered here. These are 
the square, the rectangular, the quincunz, 
and the hexagonal systems. The choice 
of any one of these systems will depend 
largely upon whether the orchard is in- 
tended to remain as it is originally 
started, or whether some of the trees are 
to be removed when they begin to crowd. 
In the square and rectangular system, 
the one usually followed in New England 
the rows run at right angles, leaving 
each set of four trees in the form of a 
Square or rectangle, depending upon 
whether the trees are planted the same 
distance apart each way. The chief ob- 
jection to this system is that the trees 
are not equally distributed, there being 
a large open space in the center of each 
set of four trees. When fillers are to be 
planted and thinned out later, this sys 
