November is the time to protect orchard trees against injury from mice and rabbits. For field-mice, soil mounding is recommended. The earth should be mounded to a height of from six to eight inches and from twelve to sixteen inches in diameter around the base of each tree and well tamped down. All grass and litter should be cleaned away from the trees. Cylinders of one-fourth-inch mesh galvanized iron wire, are a good protection against either mice or rabbits. Pieces of such wire 12 x 24 inches make cylinders of a convenient size for small trees. The cylinder, after its edges have been fastened together, should be slightly imbedded in the ground to secure it. Many protective washes have been suggested from time to time, but most of them have not proved satisfactory. Extensive experiments have shown the ordinary lime-sulphur mixture to be quite satisfactory. It is used at the ordinary strength, as for scale insects. The trunks of the trees should be sprayed or painted close to the ground and to a height of two feet above it.

A wash recommended by Ohio fruit growers is made of one peck of fresh stone-lime slaked with old soap-suds, and the mixture thinned to the consistency of whitewash. To one peck of lime, one-half gallon of crude carbolic acid, four pounds of sulphur and one gallon of soft soap are added. The trunks of the trees should be painted with this wash in late autumn. In may be that some suckers have started around the base of your trees since the last trimming. Cut every one of these out before snow comes. Late in the fall plow a furrow down through the orchard between every two rows of trees if the ground is apt to be wet. The trees will do a great deal better for this surface drainage. Also perhaps some tile drains are needed underground. County demonstration orchards are showing good results. The cost of pruning, spraying and managing the Nicholas orchard of twenty-nine trees has been forty-three cents per tree.