In your November number my attention has been attracted by the "Old Digger's" letter. In my opinion it contains, in an elegant and compressed form, all that has been and could be said about the cultivation of fruit trees. It ought to be printed apart and put in the daily memorandum or garden book of every amateur or fruit grower.

To expect from a pear or apple-tree the most delicate, sugared, high-flavored products, and that in large quantities, without any cultivation of the soil, or with not half the care, labor, and expense given to a corn crop or a potato patch, seems to be folly, when we consider that in Nature's eternal laws nothing can grow where the natural food is wanting. The trees of our woods have their leaves, the decayed branches and shrubs, besides the natural benefits of rains and atmospheric influences; still, when oak woods have had their time, oak will grow no more in the same soil, at least thriftily, and without changing its constituents. It is a well-known fact that virgin soils produce spontaneously first the noblest among the forest trees, afterwards an inferior sort, till nothing but cedars or resinous plants will cover the once rich, now worn-out soil.

I am often asked why do the apple-trees bear no longer around here ? or, when they yield a scanty crop, why is the fruit so wormy, so poor that it is hardly fitted for the market ? The reply is very easy. The soils have been worn out, not only by fifty or more crops of apples, but also by the grass, clover, and other un-manured crops, by all which, the phosphates, carbonates, and the once abounding potashes of the old forests, have been carried to market without any restitution to the generous soil. So much for the growth of the trees and their bearing. Now, when it happens that by a long interval of rest the trees have regained some strength by the natural influences of the air, rain and snow, nitrogen and ammonia, they soon blossom and yield another crop of fruit; but the soil has been so long in grass and so long neglected, that worms, bugs, and a legion of insects have found in that undisturbed soil a permanent home for themselves and their generations; and no sooner is a fruit set than they are at work by hundreds to sting and deform it.

A fruit orchard requires higher cultivation than any other crop, because it is cultivation in two stories, a crop below and one above. All that seems so very plain that I am often amazed when I see very able farmers, who would laugh at the idea of getting a wheat crop in a long neglected soil, without any manure or extra labor, look at their apple-trees as if they were exceptions to the general rule, and bound to bear no matter how poor the soil may be, because they did so fifty years ago!

A remark in Mr. William Bacon's letter (same number) hints at the possibility of overfeeding trees. There is truth in that. In the very rich and virgin soils of the West, where the trees are so luxuriant in their rapid growth, severe winters do great injury; we all know the results of our last winters in those rich prairies; but here there is little danger of overfeeding. Our soils are comparatively poor, and we are better protected by woods, hills, buildings, Ac. Let us not forget that artificial products require artificial treatment. Our refined fruit trees can never be so hardy as the virginal wild trees of the species; neither can they succeed in soils where the wild tree can find supply and food for itself and its coarse, small product. The object of nature is to perpetuate the species by seed, ours to reduce the seed for the benefit of the pulp; what is only an accessory in nature's views becomes our main object. When the laws of vegetation are introverted in that way, our utmost skill and nurturing is required to keep up those artificial creations.

They can bear manuring and feeding better than forest trees would do; and, if we do not inflate and swell their limbs with too much ammonia and water, if we use the constituents required for wood-formation chiefly, as potash, phosphates, lime, etc, there will be little danger of overfeeding trees, and I fear that for a long time to come, the reverse will mostly be the case.