Success depends very largely, also, on the character of the soil. If
it is so high and dry as to suffer severely from drought two years out
of three, it cannot be made to pay except by irrigation; if so low as
to be wet, rather than moist, the prospects are but little better.
Those who are permanently settled must do their best with such land as
they have, and in a later chapter I shall suggest how differing soils
should be managed. To those who can still choose their location, I
would recommend a deep mellow loam, with a rather compact subsoil,--
moist, but capable of thorough drainage. Diversity of soil and
exposure offer peculiar advantages also. Some fruits thrive best in a
stiff clay, others in sandy upland. Early varieties ripen earlier on a
sunny slope, while a late kind is rendered later on a northern
hillside, or in the partial shade of a grove. In treating each fruit
and variety, I shall try to indicate the soils and exposures to which
they are best adapted.

_Profits_.--The reader will naturally wish for some definite
statements of the profits of fruit farming; but I almost hesitate to
comply with this desire. A gentleman wrote to me that he sold from an
acre of Cuthbert raspberries $800 worth of fruit. In view of this
fact, not a few will sit down and begin to figure,--"If one acre
yielded $800, ten acres would produce $8,000; twenty acres $16,000,"
etc. Multitudes have been led into trouble by this kind of reasoning.
The capacity of an engine with a given motor power can be measured,
and certain and unvarying results predicted; but who can measure the
resources of an acre through varying seasons and under differing
culture, or foretell the price of the crops? In estimating future
profits, we can only approximate; and the following records are given
merely to show what results have been secured, and therefore may be
obtained again, and even surpassed. "The Country Gentleman" gives a