canes or stems of the plants to six inches.  Thousands of plants are lost or put back in their growth by leaving two or three feet of the canes to grow the first year.  Never do this.  The little fruit gained thus prematurely always entails a hundred-fold of loss.  Having set out the plants, I should next scatter over and about them one or two shovelfuls of old compost or decayed manure of some kind.  If the plants had been set out in the fall, I should mound the earth over them before freezing weather, so that there should be at least four inches of soil over the tops of the stems.  This little mound of earth over the plants or hill would protect against all injury from frost.  In the spring I should remove these mounds of earth so as to leave the ground perfectly level on all sides, and the shortened canes projecting, as at first, six inches above the surface.  During the remainder of the spring and summer the soil between the plants chiefly requires to be kept open, mellow, and free from weeds.  In using the hoe, be careful not to cut off the young raspberry sprouts, on which the future crop depends.  Do not be disappointed if the growth seems feeble the first year, for these foreign kinds are often slow in starting.  In November, before there is any danger of the ground freezing, I should cut back the young canes at least one-third of their length, bend them gently down, and cover them with earth to the depth of four or five inches.  It must be distinctly remembered that very few of the foreign kinds would endure our winter unprotected.  Every autumn they must be covered as I have directed.  Is any one aghast at this labor?  Nonsense!  Antwerps are covered by the acre along the Hudson.  A man and a boy would cover in an hour all that are needed for a garden.

After the first year the foreign varieties, like all others, will send up too many sprouts, or suckers.  Unless new plants are wanted, these should be treated as weeds, and only from three to five young canes be left to grow in each hill.  This is a very important point, for too often the raspberry-patch is neglected until it is a mass of tangled bushes.  Keep this simple principle in mind:  there is a given amount of root-power; if this cannot be expended in making young sprouts all over the ground, it goes to produce a few strong fruit-bearing canes in the hill.  In other words, you restrict the whole force of the plant to the precise work required—­the giving of berries.  As the original plants grow older, they will show a constantly decreasing tendency to throw up new shoots, but as long as they continue to grow, let only those survive which are designed to bear the following season.