JOHN GRAVES, Day, Washington county: Have lived in Kansas twenty-one years. Have an orchard of 6025 trees; 25 of these have been planted twenty years, 400 seventeen years, 1200 ten years, 400 seven years, 4000 two years. For market I grow Winesap and Ben Davis. For family use I add Missouri Pippin, Snow, and Early Harvest. Winesap best of all. I prefer hilltop, as the gophers are bad on the bottom. I prefer a black soil with lots of gravel and small stones in it. Believe that north and east slopes are best. I plant two-year-old trees with short bodies, twenty-five feet apart each way. I cultivate with corn for about ten years, using the stirring plow and cultivator. I believe windbreaks are essential, and would use four rows of cherry trees set close together, or a row of hedge or box-elder, mainly on the south; some on the north. For protection from rabbits I tie corn-stalks around the trees, and keep them on for three or four years, winter and summer. I prune some with the pocket-knife and saw. I do not thin the fruit unless I think the limbs are going to break. I would use no fertilizer unless the soil is very poor. Never pasture the orchard. I sprayed one year with London purple, using a barrel with a pump in it. I could not see that it did any good, so I let them go. I pick in buckets from a step-ladder. People come from the west with wagons and take the apples right out of the orchard, and they don't sort much. I make some culls into cider and let the rest lay under the trees and rot. The price last year was seventy-five cents per bushel, and the year before thirty-five cents. I store a few for winter in thin layers, one above another, in a rack in the cellar, and am successful. Winesaps keep the best. For picking I use good careful men at one dollar per day. * * * * *