The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1892-11-30


note how savage our sentimentalists
can be, upon occasion. The solemn
necessity that forced our people to arm
when the national flag was torn down
at Sumter, and crush rebellion to save
the nation, found every sentimentalist
in the country fired with most blood
thirsty passions against their fellow
men of the opposite section. On both
sides the sentimentalists were for the
very cruelest practices of warfare. But
time and times teachings sobered
them down, though slight echoes of
the savagery of weakness may still be
heard from both sections.
THE same passion of weakness in
tests our politics and is the fruitful
source of campaign falsehood, and the
puny bitterness and malice which deny
all righteous or patriotic purpose to our
political antagonists. There is some
thing wrong in the moral diet and
makeup of such people. They don't
live enough in the sunlight The old
monks, who housed themselves within
stone walls, were of the same fiber, and
felt the same bitterness towards every
body who dared to think as they did
not. Live in the sun, and keep your
brains and hearts free from cant and
cobwebs.
WE guess we are getting little off
from agriculture and horticulture in
this depression on the bird question.
We believe in humanity to all sorts of
animals but we shall continue to kill
potato bugs, cut-worms and crows
and shoot partridge occasionally, be-
sides. And if our son-in-law (who is
a parson) wants to assist in this last
operation, we are going to furnish him
with gun. We have good shooting
and good fishing quite handy.
WHETHER sheep should be allowed
in an orchard is a question often dis
| cussed, and the common verdict rem
dered is better not" Yet we find
some orchardists are in favor Of it, and
regard sheep, when properly managed,
as great benefit in utilizing the wind
falls, economically using the grass in
grassed orchard, and incidentally in re-
ducing the number of injurious insects,
such as the Goblin worm, and the newer
railroad worm (tripeta pomonella).
Professor Budd of the Iowa Agricultural
College is an old nurseryman and or
chardist, and his views on the subj ect
are given in Rural Life as follows " If
properly managed, the orchard may be
pastured profitably by sheep. The only
essential is not to pasture too closely
and to have it 80 arranged as to turn in
the sheep from the yards in the morn
ing and take them out when they get
restless and rambling, as this is the
stage when they reach up for the limbs
and hunt for branch where the bark
is tender. Experience has proven that
the orchard insects do not thrive where
the sheep run. With the sheep in the
orchard our apples had less worms, and
the leaf-eating insects, tbrips, ETC., were
not as common and destructive as in
orchards near by where grass and weeds
grow"
WHETHER tits best to seed an orchard
to grass, is another veXed question.
We think the reply depends somewhat
upon the natural strength of the land.
On thin, light soil, constant manuring
and tillage is needed to keep up the
size of the fruit and the growth of the
trees; and little neglect in these
points reduces such orchards to USE
lessness and decay in few years. But
in naturally deep, strong, moist soil
soil where June grass (poa pratensis) is
entirely at home, producing an autumn
crop of its narrow LEAKAGE two feet or
more long-the apple is so well suited
that, with feeding the grass off the
ground by sheep, and good dressing
of fine manure on the off year, the fruit
maintains its size and beauty, and the
trees their productiveness; while the
grass makes much nicer bed for the
apples to fall upon than bare gravel.
In such an orchard, with the trees
formed with fairly high heads, sheep
can be utilized with considerable adj
vantage not only to themselves, but to
the crop of fruit.
In setting such an orchard, how far