184 
GARDENS AND ORCHARDS. 
ance, and have room allowed in proportion ; they are 
here planted in nine-foot ridges, and fruit trees only 
in every fifth ridge, which is 15 yards from row to 
row, and they are near 14 yards asunder in the rows, 
each tree has therefore about 200 square yards of land, 
which is only 24 to an acre, this is the case in the hop 
grounds ; in the arable and pasture orchards, they are 
thicker on the ground, and nearer each other. 
Mr. Smith has adopted a particular mode of fencing 
or guarding young fruit trees, when planted on exposed 
land; he plants around them a tuft of well-grown haw¬ 
thorn quicksets, without lopping, close to the tree ; 
the tops of the quicksets are tied round so as to guard 
the tree, and grow with it's growth: upon my observ¬ 
ing that the growth of these quicksets must rob the 
young fruit tree of part of its nutriment, his answer 
was, young fruit trees succeed no where better than 
in hedges, and this ca^se is similar; besides he has 
found, from long experience, the practice to answer 
well; and, he observes, “ nobody’s trees bear better 
or sooner than his so guarded when the tree is suf¬ 
ficiently grown, the growing quicksets are taken away ; 
it is very probable, that the shelter and protection they 
have afforded the young fruit tree have more than made 
ample amends for sharing its nutriment from the earth ; 
anil their roots also, most probably, strike in different 
directions in search of such nutriment, 
A variety of the apple, termed Fox-whelp, is esteem¬ 
ed a good cyder apple here, but is an uncertain bearer, 
and is said to have generally borne better formerly. 
One of Mr. Smith’s labourers has been known, to 
make 11 hogsheads of cyder, from the produce of three 
quarters of an acre of land in one year, and expects 
this season, 1807, to make five or six hogsheads from 
the same orchard. 
CHAR 
