manure when
you fill in the ditch with half new material. Then (and all this work
should be done, as it can readily be done, in your latitude during the
cold months when vegetation is at a stand) give the old trees a thorough
pruning, even going as far as to remove 90 per cent of all the leaf and
fruit buds on the tree. Then wait for results, looking for nothing more
than a new growth of wood the first year, but fruitfulness thereafter
and a new lease of life. But remember as in the first place, care must
be taken to supply abundant water, indeed as much more as the average
rainfall, so much being absolutely necessary to afford the roots the
amount of manurial plant food, in solution, the new departure demands.
Every fruit-grower knows when a dwarf pear has borne a certain number of
crops, fruit buds cease to form and the tree becomes nearly barren. If
at this stage the dwarf is deprived of every bud, whether fruit or leaf,
and the limbs are left to resemble bare sticks, and at the same time the
earth about the roots is fortified with wood ashes and well rotted
manure, a handsome growth of branches will be made the first year and a
crop of fruit result the second. This, the writer has tried with
perfectly satisfactory results twice on the same dwarfs, and has others
which, having been submitted to this course of treatment, in the fall of
1882, made a handsome growth in 1883, and have set fruit buds for a good
crop in 1884. The life of an average apple tree in Illinois is scarcely
more than 35 or 40 years; but there is no doubt if, when they begin to
show signs of decrepitude or decay, they are treated as above, they may
be made to live and bear fruit for perhaps a hundred years.

AMERICAN ASH.

There are five well-known species of this genus (Fraxinus Americana),
and they occupy an important place as valuable timber trees. This is
especially true of the white ash, more commonly called the American ash.
Of this tree the late Arthur Bryant, Sr., said in his Book on Trees: "It
is one of the most valuable and worthy of culture for the quality of its
wood and the rapidity of its growth. When full grown it is one of the
largest of the trees of our forests. * * * * The prairie soils of Iowa
and Central and Northern Illinois are well adapted to the growth of the
white ash."

WAYSIDE NOTES.

BY A MAN OF THE PRAIRIE.

It is a strange and almost an unheard of thing for any one to say a good
word for the "tre