266 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
An apple orchard planted in the best locality you have, though 
it may not be all that you could wish, will rarely fail to make 
paying returns. If your ground is too wet, and tile draining is be¬ 
yond your reach, then plow into high ridges and plant on top of 
these. If your soil is poor, and manure is not at hand, then 
use muck, or leaf-mould from the forest. Apply all fertilizeis at 
or near the surface, instead of spending time and money ,to bury 
them deeply. 
You will constantly hear of new and very choice varieties, but 
if the three or five dollars necessary to their possession is not in 
your pocket, console yourself by planting the best kinds within 
your reach—such as you have seen living and growing thriftily 
and bearing constant and heavy crops—and your net income shall 
not be diminished thereby. 
Having given this much of license to the general planter, it is 
but just that we add a word of caution in self-defense. 
It is this : While being encouraged by the foregoing, it is not 
expected that you will use it as a cloak to greater omissions and 
carelessness, but that you consider this the least that you must 
dare to do, and strive to do just as much better as circumstances 
will permit. If, after planting, you leave your trees to the tender 
mercies of grass and weeds, if you delegate your hogs to do the 
cultivating and your cattle the pruning, please exonerate us. 
While it is desirable that new kinds be fully tested, and while 
large collections of varieties in the hands of skillful cultivators are 
very valuable as illustrating the comparative merits of each, yet 
there will be found in these large collections but few varieties that 
will help the general planter to put cash in his pocket, or bushels 
of fruit in his cellar ; and herein our fruit exhibitions often mis¬ 
lead the casual observer. Fifty or one hundred varieties by one 
exhibitor are a pleasing sight, and the owner may well feel proud 
of them; but to the seeker after knowledge, they “ tell no tales.” 
They are there like children at a school exhibition, in their good 
clothes and on their good behavior, with the thing they don’t 
know, or don’t do carefully withheld. 
The fact that three to six varieties yield all the paying income 
of every orchard is taught, and the lesson repeated by every year’s 
