arrels from the piles in the orchard. Wagons come from the west and
buy the apples from the orchard at wholesale; sell the second grade to
apple peddlers; make cider for vinegar of the culls. My best market is
at home; never have tried distant markets. Do not dry any. I store
apples for our own use, and have apples the year round. The Little
Romanite keeps best. I do not irrigate. Apples wholesale at twenty-five
cents per bushel in the orchard. I employ men at $1.25 per day.

I had twenty-four very fine Siberian crabs--Hyslop, Transparent, and
Whitney. They were affected with blight. Nearly all of the Siberian
trees were dead from the effects of it, and one day, while in the
orchard watching the movements of the birds and boys, I saw a striped
woodpecker fly to one of the trees, and he found what he supposed to be
a grub, but when he got through the bark he was very much disappointed,
wiped his bill, and flew to another tree, where he continued to wipe and
clean his bill; so I went to the tree mentioned, and found the bark very
loose and sour where he had punctured it. I compared the smell and taste
with the blighted twigs and found them the same. I cut the bark that was
loose from the tree, and found the rapid growth of the bark and the flow
of the sap had bursted the bark from the wood, and this sap had soured
and been taken up by the other sap and poisoned the ends of the new
growth; hence, it blighted. It was sap poison, like blood poison. I then
used the knife freely, splitting the body and limbs. I saved twenty out
of twenty-four of the trees. I then went over the orchard and cured
all the trees in one season; never been bothered since. The woodpecker
taught me a lesson, and I relate it to show the value of birds in the
orchard.

* * * * *

A. C. MOORE, Wanamaker, Shawnee county: I have lived in Kansas
thirty-three years; have an apple orchard of 400 trees, from twelve to
seventeen years old. For market I prefer Winesap, Jonathan, Missouri
Pippin, and Ben Davis; and for a family orchard Red Astrachan, Early
Harvest, Maiden's Blush, Smokehouse, and Winesap. Have tried and
discarded Tulpehocken; it rots on the tree and will not keep. I prefer
bottom land, with sandy loam and clay subsoil, and a north slope. I
prefer two-year-old trees, with full top and roots, set fifteen inches
deep, in furrows checked with the plow; plant where furrows cross. I
plant my orchard to corn eight years,