ent quantity to be considered in a commercial way. Our Duchess we
sold in barrels at $2.00 net. Wealthy we packed in bushel boxes, making
two sizes, the larger, three inches and over, we called No. 1, and they
sold for $1.25 per box net. The balance or smaller ones were also sold
in boxes and brought us $1.00 per box net. Patten Greenings brought us
80 cents and Northwestern Greenings, 90 cents per box. Our neighbors,
who sold to the local and transient buyers in bulk and in barrels,
received 75 cents to 90 cents per hundred pounds, or $2.00 per barrel.

The past year we had only about 75 bushels of all kinds. With the
exception of Duchess and possibly Patten's Greening we shall certainly
sell our next crop in bushel boxes.

We are top-working about 50 Patten's Greening to Jonathan, Delicious,
McIntosh Red and King David. As the work was only started a year ago
last spring I cannot tell you of its success or failure. So far the best
results seem to be with the Jonathan.

We also have about thirty varieties of plums, including many of Prof.
Hansen's new hybrids. Of these the Opata seems to be the most hardy and
prolific, but it is subject to brown rot, which, this past year was so
bad that we lost more than half the fruit. We have it top-worked on
several varieties of native plums, and it was similarly affected there
also. This was the only variety in our orchard of 150 trees that was so
affected. We have fifteen Surprise plums, set seven years, that have not
yielded altogether a peck of plums. Only lack of time kept me from
grubbing them out last spring. This past season they were so heavily
loaded that we had to prop the limbs and then thin out the fruit.

We endeavor to spray all our trees twice with commercial lime-sulphur
and arsenate of lead--the first time immediately after the blossoms
fall, the second two weeks later. Our spraying outfit consists of a
Morrill & Morley hand pump, fitted in a 100-gallon tank, which we
mounted on a small, one-horse truck. We operate it with three men, one
to drive and pump and one for each line of hose, spraying two rows of
trees at once. With this outfit we can spray 400 to 500 trees (of the
size of ours) a day.

* * * * *

THE NATIONAL FORESTS--besides being the American farmer's most
valuable source of wood, which is the chief building material for rural
purposes, are also his most valuable source of water, both for
irrigation and domestic us