By L. H. Bailey, Jr., New York, Orange Judd Co., 1886. This is a brief essay of 90 pages giving apparently the experience of the author and his father, and as the result of such experience has a value that will be always appreciated. Aside from this we fancy most experienced orchardists would cordially endorse the teachings of the author. Yet we fancy that if this essay were read before one of our leading pomological societies it would meet the usual fate of prolonged discussion on many points. For instance, the expression "cold and backward soils, even if well under-drained, do not give good results. I am not to be understood as discouraging tile drainage, but I prefer a soil naturally well drained to one tile drained." The inference from this would be that one had no alternative but tile draining or high lands. The fact is that some of the most successful orchards in Illinois and other places are on land where water would stand all winter. But the land is plowed up into ridges, and the trees planted on these ridges.

It is much cheaper and far more effective than under-draining, and the trees do much better than on high land where the fertilizing materials are washed to the lowlands with every rain.

We are not so sure either that the men who steal apples are usually those who have never been to Sunday-school, - a statement the author himself seems to doubt in another place where he intimates that college boys are more likely to steal from a disagreeable old curmudgeon, than from a smilingly affable orchardist. We take it for granted that most of the collegians had been or are Sunday-school boys. Still, the experience of a successful cultivator is not to be judged by a few weak points which all experiences have.