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.

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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 use.  In the West, they afford him a protected grazing range for his stock; they are the best insurance against flood damage to his fields, his buildings, his bridges, his roads, and the fertility of his soil.  The national forests cover the higher portions of the Rocky Mountain ranges, the Cascades, the Pacific Coast ranges, and a large part of the forested coast and islands of Alaska; some of the hilly regions in Montana and in the Dakotas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and limited areas in Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, and Porto Rico.  In addition, land is now being purchased for national forests in the White Mountains of New England and in the southern Appalachians.  In regions so widely scattered, agricultural and forest conditions necessarily differ to a great degree, bringing about corresponding differences in the effect of the national forests on the agricultural interests of the various localities.  Wherever agriculture can be practiced, however, the farmer is directly benefited by the existence of national forests and by their proper management.—­U.S.  Dept. of Agri.