"Subscriber," Baltimore, Md., writes: " We have a great many pear trees in the garden from fifteen to thirty years of age. The bark is tight and scaly; when they do bear fruit, it is hard and full of worms; some seasons the trees lose all their leaves before the end of August.

"The garden has been ploughed once a year with a two-horse plow as close as the man can get to the trees. I thought this ploughing must have injured the young roots from time to time as we can't see any small fibery root".

The pear trees have become stunted, and very likely the close ploughing has injured the roots, cutting off so many that not enough good ones are left to furnish a full supply to the tree, and hence they have been starved. Even when plenty of manure is applied with the ploughing, the tree will be starved when so large a proportion of its roots are destroyed.

Precisely the same results often follow from leaving an orchard in grass without an occasional top-dressing. The grass and the roots together soon eat up the little food, and again the tree will be starved.

The perfection of orchard culture is to have the surface in grass, provided an occasional top-dressing of manure can be applied.

The question with you will be, the trees being in this condition, what can be done to increase the vital power?

First trim out all the weakest of the stunted shoots. Paint the rest of the tree with pure linseed oil. Be sure that it is pure - if adulterated it may kill the tree. Slit the hide-bound bark, up and down with a knife, which will the more readily permit expansion when the new growth comes. Nature intended this bark to crack and split, but the insects prevented nature's law from operating. By artificially slitting you help nature against the insects. Then haul road sand, earth from the headlands, or any refuse soil you can get, and cover the whole surface of the ground under the branches an inch or more deep. If you have any manure to spare to put with it, all the better. Then abandon the plowing, but do not let strong vegetation grow till the roots of the pear have full possession of the ground.

If you do this we think you will have a free, vigorous growth next summer that will surprise those who knew them in their days of sickness and suffering.