H. L. FERRIS, Osage City, Osage county: A citizen of Kansas for twenty-one years. Have an orchard of 4000 apple trees--200 twenty years, 1800 seventeen years, 2000 sixteen years planted. Prefer, for commercial purposes, Ben Davis, Winesap, and Missouri Pippin; for family orchard: Winesap, Missouri Pippin, Jonathan, Romanite, and Maiden Blush; have discarded Rawle's Janet. Prefer good upland corn ground, with sand or gravel subsoil, north and east slope. I plow deep, and plant large two-year-old trees, shallow, and mound up; shorten roots and branches. Cultivate with plow and harrow from youth to old age. Grow corn in young orchard up to six years, afterward nothing. Prefer a windbreak on south, west, and north, of box-elders, Osage orange, or peach. Rub liver on trees to repel rabbits, and use a knife for borers. To prune with a little saw makes the trees grow faster, and the apples grow larger, and it pays. Use stable and barn-yard litter to fertilize with, and it pays. Would not allow live stock to run in orchard. Am troubled with roundheaded borers and codling-moth. Spray in May and June for bitter rot and fungous diseases. Fight borers with a five-eighths chisel, a wire, and coal-tar. Pick from step-ladders into tin pails hung to branch with wire hook; haul in boxes on spring wagon to packing place. Sort on tables into three grades--first, second, and cider apples; pack into eleven- or twelve-peck barrels. Sell in all ways; have sold in orchard. Ship the best; best market in Texas. Send six-inch apples to where they are scarce; culls I sell cheaply at home, evaporate some, and make vinegar. Use a Zimmerman evaporator and Eureka parers. Sell dried fruit at retail, have shipped some; do not think it pays, do not find a ready market. Store for winter use in boxes in cellar successfully; find Romanite and Winesap keep best; lose about one-fourth. Have irrigated some from a pond with an eight-inch hose and steam-power pump. Average price has been fifty cents per bushel for apples and five cents a pound for dried apples. Use male help gathering, and female help at dryer, paying eight to ten cents per hour. * * * * *