t scale off so badly. Two applications have been
enough for our young trees the past winter. We also use traps which are
very similar to the Wellhouse traps, described in the Kansas State
Horticultural Report for 1897. Tarred paper, corn-stalks, veneering,
screen wire, cloth tied around the trees, or a woven-wire fence around
the entire orchard, are all among the practical means used to fence
against rabbits; but don't try the plan of one of my neighbors, unless
you have too many trees; he applied coal-tar; it kept the rabbits off,
and his orchard is now a treeless corn-field.

During winter we haul manure direct from the stable and spread under the
trees (not against them) out as far as the ends of the limbs. On good
ground I would not do much of this until the trees get to bearing, as it
would interfere somewhat with cultivation and would not be needed, but
when a good annual crop is taken from the orchard something must be
returned, or the supply is going to run out. On thin land rotten manure
applied when the trees are small will do them good. Pasturing an orchard
at any time is of doubtful expediency; it is safer not to. I have
sprayed but once. That was done just after the blossoms fell, and again
ten days later. There were fewer wormy apples than usual. That was last
year. Think I will try it further.

For a home orchard Early Harvest, Yellow Transparent, Maiden's Blush,
Grimes's Golden Pippin, Winesap, Missouri Pippin and Ben Davis do well
here and keep up a supply from first to last. For commercial planting
Ben Davis is perhaps best here as elsewhere. Missouri Pippin does well;
Winesap bears enormously, but is too small, and gets smaller as the
trees get older. There is a good local demand here for Grimes's Golden
Pippin and a few of any very early variety. Willow Twig has been
worthless on account of blight and rot. Encourage birds by every means,
and never let one, or a nest, be disturbed, unless it is that
belligerent little alien, the English sparrow. They are at war with all
the feathered tribe, even with their own relations, and should be
exterminated. Don't begrudge birds a few feeds of cherries and berries,
when they work for nothing and board themselves nearly all the year.

* * * * *

A. H. BUCKMAN, Topeka, Shawnee county: I have lived in Kansas
twenty-eight years; have an apple-orchard of 1000 trees two to
twenty-six years old. For market I prefer Maiden's Blush, Jon