In the first place, if you contemplate appropriating a portion of your land for the raising of fruits, you should have the orchard so situated that no large animals can run at large on the grounds. Prepare your soil in the most thorough manner; underdrain, if necessary, to carry off surplus water; dig deep, large holes; fill in the bottom with debris; in the very bottom put a few leaves, clam and oyster shells, etc., then sods; above and below the roots put a good garden or field soil; do not give the trees fresh manure at the time of setting, but the following fall manure highly with any kind on top of the ground; dig it in the following spring; keep the soil frequently worked during the summer, and, if convenient, mulch with hay, straw, or leaves.
Now you are on the road to progress, provided you have made no mistake in the selection of your trees. The purposes for which you intend your fruit is highly important. You should well consider at the outset if for family or market use. This is a business which requires a long look ahead, for it is said, "He who plants pears looks ahead for his heirs."
Caution should be used in procuring your stock; little should be planted that is not fairly tested on the Island, purchased of parties who can be fully relied upon to give you what you want. Do not buy your stock of parties who carry labels in their pockets to make to order what you want out of the same bundle of trees.
Now, having your trees set out in a proper manner, of such varieties as you desire, the next important step is to bring the trees into usefulness. My plan is to use bone--fine bone--very freely about every three years. Another important matter is that of trimming. "Fire purifies," and the knife regulates the grand balance or equilibrium between roots and tops. In most cases the top outgrows the roots, the consequence of which is an ultimate weakness of the tree. It is thrown into excessive fruiting, disease, and premature decay. To avoid this result, use the knife when required. Thin out the inside branches when small, and if the tree does not make a satisfactory growth, cut back half way to the ground.
We will suppose that you have got your trees growing nicely, and they have begun to bear fruit. There are other important steps to be taken, which will be of little cost to you. Provide a wind-break for the orchard. Evergreens answer the purpose, being a protection against the wind. Having this matter attended to, there are other enemies with which we must contend. I refer to the apple and peach tree borers. The former will live in the tree for three years, if unmolested; the latter, one year only. They are very easily destroyed by looking over the trees and taking them out with a knife; or maybe prevented from touching the trees by wrapping a piece of felt paper, 8 inches wide, around the tree near the ground, the bottom being covered with dirt and the top tied tightly above. The pear is not generally disturbed by these insects--only the apple, peach, and quince. We have another insect very destructive to the plum, peach, cherry, and apple--thecurcutio, or plum weavel. This season for the first time in twenty years we have gathered a small crop of that very desirable plum, the Purple Favorite. We simply threw air-slaked lime over the trees nearly every morning for from four to six weeks, from the time the tree was out of bloom. Peach trees should be treated in the same manner. Another method of fighting this insect is to spread a sheet under the tree, and with a blow jar off the little Turk and secure him on the sheet. But I consider the lime procedure the less trouble and more effective. The tent caterpillar, which is easily seen, should be destroyed at once. We have yet another insect to contend with which infests the apple and pear, commonly called the Coddling Moth, and the larva, the apple-worm (Garpocapsa pomonella). The loss by the ravaaes of this insect alone to the fruit growers of the United States fan hardly be estimated, as in many cases the whole crop is rendered worthless. Such a vast destruction of two of the most valuable fruits the world produces should stimulate scientists in this age of progress to discover an effectual remedy against such a gigantic evil.
I have never yet discovered nor tried an effectual remedy against this insect. The nearest I have approached his extermination is in the following manner: After it has entered the fruit and accomplished its damage, the time arrives when it has to leave the fruit and hide itself in a quiet, secure position to undergo the transition from the larva to the pupa state, which requires, in the early part of the season, eight or ten days; after this time the miller is hatched and is again ready to besiege the fruit with its sting. The insect, being two-brooded in this climate at least, if not disturbed, has an aggregating force to do mischief the second time. The progeny for the succeeding year have alone to depend on the security of this second generation of larvæ. As they may often be found in bark of apple trees during winter, my plan of destruction is, about the first of July to take woolen rags long enough to wrap around the trees, and say four inches wide. Each week I look over the trees, and destroy the worms secreted under the rags and wherever I find them until the fruit is off the trees. I have all the green fruit, of every kind, carefully picked up as soon as it falls, thereby destroying many of the curculio as well as the apple-worms.
One word upon the grape--the insect part of the question. ThePhylloxera vastatrix, or grape-vine louse, is already at work on Long Island. It is found very difficult to raise many of our fine, new grapes with us in consequence of the depredations of this very minute insect, it being almost too small to be seen by the naked eye. There has lately been discovered a remedy which is entirely chemical and as yet but little disseminated. Very soon, no doubt, a discovery will be made that will stay the progress of this destructive enemy.
We should plant aplenty of cherry and small fruit trees to yield feed for birds. In return they will assist us in our efforts to preserve a bountiful supply of this health producing element.
A recent subscriber wants advice how to feed pigs of 25 to 35 pounds weight, that are to be kept over winter and fitted for sale at about six months old--whether coarse food will not help them as much in winter as in summer. How roots and pumpkins will answer in lieu of grass, and what can be fed when this green food is gone? He has had poor success in growing young pigs on corn alone. He has a reasonably warm pen for winter.
The question of food is constantly recurring, and this is one of the best evidences of the advancement of the country in the feeder's art. When people are making no inquiry as to improved methods in any direction, no progress can be made. There has been more progress made in the philosophy of feeding during the last thirty years than in the century and a half previous.
In pig feeding in the dairy districts, young pigs generally grow up in a very healthy condition, owing to the refuse milk of the dairy, which furnishes the principal food of young pigs. Skim-milk contains all the elements for growing the muscles and bones of young pigs. This gave them a good, rangy frame, and, when desired, could be fed into 400 or 500 pounds weight. But the fault attending this feeding was, that it was too scanty to produce such rapid growth as is desired. It took too long to develop them for the best profit. It had not then been discovered by the farmer that it costs less to put the first hundred pounds on the pig than the second, and less for the second than the third, etc.; that it was much cheaper to produce 200 pounds of pork in six months than in nine and twelve months. When it became evident that profit required more rapid feeding, then they began to ply them continually with the most concentrated food--corn meal or clear corn. If this was fed in summer, on pasture, no harm was observed, for the grass gave bulk in the stomach, and the pigs were were healthy and made good progress. But if the young pigs were fed in pen in winter upon corn meal or clear corn, the result was quite different; this concentrated food produced feverish symptoms, and the pigs would lose their appetite for a few days, drinking only water, which, after a while, would relieve the stomach, and the pigs would eat vigorously again. Now, had they been fed a few quarts of turnips, carrots, beets, or pumpkins, to give bulk to the stomach, and separate the concentrated food, no harm would have come. This gives the gastric juice a free circulation through the contents of the stomach, the food is properly digested and applied to the needs of the body instead of causing fever by remaining in the stomach.--Live Stock Journal.
Our engraving is a portrait of a familiar character in New Zealand, chief Mete Kingi, who recently died at the age of one hundred years. He was a fine specimen of the Maori race, the native New Zealanders, a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian family. The New Zealanders surpassed all other people in the art of tattooing, to which their chiefs gave especial attention. Mete Kingi, as our picture shows, was no exception. Tattooing on the face they termedmoko. The men tattoo their faces, hips, and thighs; the women their upper lips; for this purpose charcoal made from kauri gum is chiefly used. It has the blue color when pricked into the skin, growing lighter in shade in the course of years. The subject of our illustration embraced Christianity, and was much respected. Our engraving is from theIllustrated Australian News.
THE LATE MAORI CHIEF METE KINGI.
THE LATE MAORI CHIEF METE KINGI.
Some very interesting information by Prof. John Le Conte, is given in theOverland Monthly, being the result of some physical observations made by the author at Lake Tahoe, in 1873. Lake Tahoe, also called Lake Bigler, is situated at an altitude of 6,247 feet in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, partly in California, partly in Nevada. The lake has a length of 22 and a width of 12 miles. As regards its origin, the author regards it as a "plication hollow," or a trough produced by the formation of two mountain ridges, afterward modified by glacial agency. The depth of the lake is remarkable; the observations taken at ten stations along the length of the lake gave the following depths in feet: 900, 1,385, 1,495, 1,500, 1,506, 1,540, 1,504, 1,600, 1,640, 1645. This depth exceeds that of the Swiss lakes proper--Lake Geneva, for example, has a maximum depth of 1,096 feet--but is considerably less than that of Lakes Maggiore and Como, on the Italian side of the Alps. A series of observations of the temperature of the water were taken between the 11th and 18th of August. The average corrected results are as follows:
Depth in feet. Temp. (C.)0(surface).................................19.450..........................................17.2100..........................................12.8150..........................................10.0200.......................................... 8.9250.......................................... 8.3300.......................................... 7.8330 (bottom)................................. 7.5400.......................................... 7.2480 (bottom)................................. 6.9500.......................................... 6.7600.......................................... 6.1772 (bottom)................................. 5.01506 (bottom)..............,.................. 4.0
The temperature, therefore, diminishes with increasing depth to about 700 or 800 feet, and below this remains sensibly the same down to 1,506 feet; or in other words, a constant temperature of 4° C. prevails at all depths below about. 820 feet. This is in accordance with the theory, the temperature named being that of the maximum density of water, and it confirms the recent observations of Prof. Forel in Switzerland; he found, for example, that a constant temperature of 4° C. was reached in Lake Zurich at a depth of nearly 400 feet, the lake being then covered with 4 inches of ice. The explanation of the observed fact that Lake Tahoe does not entirely freeze over even in severe winters is found in the extreme depth; and the fact that the bodies of drowned persons do not rise to the surface after the lapse of the usual time is explained by the low temperature prevailing near the bottom, which does not allow the necessary decomposition to go forward so as to produce the ordinary result.
The water of Lake Tahoe is remarkable both for its transparency and beauty of color. A series of observations made at the close of August or beginning of September showed that a horizontally adjusted dinner plate of about 9½ inches diameter was visible at noon at a depth of 108 feet. The maximum depth of the limit of visibility as found by Prof. Forel, in Lake Geneva, was 56 feet. He showed, moreover, that this limit is much greater in. winter than in summer, as explained in part by the greater absence of suspended matter and in part by the fact that increase of temperature increases the absorbing power of water for light. The maximum depth of visibility in the Atlantic Ocean, as found by Count de Pourtales, was 162 feet, and Prof. Le Conte states his belief that winter observations in Lake Tahoe would place the limit at even a greater depth than this. The author gives a detailed and interesting discussion in regard to the blue color of lake waters, reviewing in full the results of previous writers on the subject, and concludes that while pure water unquestionably absorbs a larger part of the red end of the spectrum, and hence appears blue by transmitted light, the color seen by diffuse reflection is mainly due to the selective reflection from the fine particles suspended in it.
The last subject discussed by the author is that of the rhythmical variations of level, or "seiches," of deep lakes; he applies the usual formula to Lake Tahoe, and calculates from it the length of a complete longitudinal and of a transverse "seiche;" these are found to be eighteen or nineteen minutes in the first case and thirteen minutes in the second.
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