My trees are in mixed plantings, but cannot see any benefit from it. I fertilize my orchard by plowing under the green weeds. I think a vegetable mold is what the trees require; think it beneficial, and would advise it on all soils. I pasture my orchard in the spring with sows and pigs; think it advisable, and that it pays. Codling-moth troubles my apples. I spray right after the blossom falls, and a few days later, with London purple, for the codling-moth, and we are getting away with him. For borers and other insects I allow the birds in the orchard, and do not allow the boys to go in with guns, or disturb them at all. I pick my apples by hand from a step-ladder, and pile them under the tree. I sort in two classes from a long, wide, sloping board with sides. I pack in barrels from the piles in the orchard. Wagons come from the west and buy the apples from the orchard at wholesale; sell the second grade to apple peddlers; make cider for vinegar of the culls. My best market is at home; never have tried distant markets. Do not dry any. I store apples for our own use, and have apples the year round. The Little Romanite keeps best. I do not irrigate. Apples wholesale at twenty-five cents per bushel in the orchard. I employ men at $1.25 per day. I had twenty-four very fine Siberian crabs--Hyslop, Transparent, and Whitney. They were affected with blight. Nearly all of the Siberian trees were dead from the effects of it, and one day, while in the orchard watching the movements of the birds and boys, I saw a striped woodpecker fly to one of the trees, and he found what he supposed to be a grub, but when he got through the bark he was very much disappointed, wiped his bill, and flew to another tree, where he continued to wipe and clean his bill; so I went to the tree mentioned, and found the bark very loose and sour where he had punctured it. I compared the smell and taste with the blighted twigs and found them the same. I cut the bark that was loose from the tree, and found the rapid growth of the bark and the flow of the sap had bursted the bark from the wood, and this sap had soured and been taken up by the other sap and poisoned the ends of the new growth; hence, it blighted. It was sap poison, like blood poison. I then used the knife freely, splitting the body and limbs. I saved twenty out of twenty-four of the trees. I then went over the orchard and cured all the trees in one season; never been bothered since. The woodpecker taught me a lesson, and I relate it to show the value of birds in the orchard. * * * * *