The practice of permitting the grass to grow and form a sod on the surface of the ground devoted to orcharding is advocated by some quite intelligent writers; while others, equally as intelligent and of long experience, oppose it, and maintain that in order to have good, fair, and well-grown fruit, it is necessary to keep the surface of the ground loose and free from any exhausting crop. Both are undoubtedly correct, in part, for we have seen orchards that while yearly cultivated produced fine and perfect fruit, but as soon, or within three years of after being left in grass, the fruit became knotty and imperfect; and again after cultivation produced fair and perfect crops. Again : we have seen old orchards in many States that have had no cultivation for years, and yet produce crops of fair and handsome fruit. We know cherry-trees that have had nothing but turf beneath their branches for many years, and yet their fruit is annually fair and good. And, again, we know of cherry-trees that were kept cultivated ten or more years, and then gave yearly beautiful fruit, but afterward neglected and left in turf, the grass not even mowed; since then they have not for several years produced fruit equal to former seasons or up to the same grown on trees of like varieties well cultivated not a half mile distant. "One swallow does not make a summer," nor does one man's success in growing a crop in a certain manner entail any certainty that that is the best way.

That deep cultivation, with a plow going near to the bodies of the trees and breaking the roots yearly around the crown, and six to eight inches deep, occasions injury and may be counted as a bad practice, we have no doubt; but that a young or bearing orchard is the better for being let alone and the grass permitted to grow, rather than have the soil annually stirred and kept loose, free to the action of air, heat, and moisture at a depth of three to four inches, we do not yet believe. There is undoubtedly a medium desirable: too deep and too frequent stirring of the soil or too late in the season would unquestionably be detrimental; but if a young or bearing orchard has the surface soil to a depth of three inches well cultivated in all the growing portion of the year, we have not a doubt that nine times out of ten it would present a more healthy appearance, and give better fruit than one left in sod, even if all the grass be left to decay upon the spot where it grew. Certain deep rich soils there undoubtedly are which have in them a superabundant food for vigorous and rapid growth of trees planted therein for many years; but these are the exception rather than the rule in all our best fruit-growing sections.

Locations of this sort on the prairies, and in rich valley bottoms, are to be found; but they are not generally counted as most to be valued for fruit-growing; and to prepare orchard ground by a first thorough deep trenching and enriching, if thought necessary to success, would check progress in orcharding to an extent that where now there are hundreds, there would not be ten acres planted yearly. We are decidedly in favor of progress, and if we could believe that neglect would grow young orchards and produce equally good fruit as judicious, careful, intelligent cultivation, we should advocate it most heartily, on account of labor - saving, which is a heavy item in the way of getting an orchard into, and keeping it in, a healthy, vigorous condition; but at present we are not sufficiently advanced to do other than advise every owner of a young orchard to keep the surface of the ground stirred annually in the early part of the summer to a depth of three or four inches, repeating the stirring up to August, as often as the ground appears hard or packed by heavy rains; and especially do we advise all owners of young orchards to keep all grass or litter from around the bodies of or near to the trees during the winter season because of probable depredations from mice that may harbor therein, and in time of heavy snows obtain their food from the bark of the young trees.