100 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



into the Russian category, and acknowledges them its adaptation. ■ Second, 

 There is adaptatioa to high lands and adaptation to low lands, to sandy soils 

 and to clay soils. There are trees that have a general adaptation and others 

 with special adaptation — while the Duchess is general and the Wealthy 

 nearly as much so. If a farmer has a valley location, sandy, or where the 

 water comes near the surface, let him plant the Wolf River, a variety whose 

 parent tree, now thirty-two years old, in Waupaca county, Wisconsin, stands 

 where its roots touch the waters of the river, whence it takes its name, and 

 whose progeny, scattered well throughout the West, show, as I am informed 

 by J. C. Plumb, of Milton, the same adaptation to low, sandy and wet soils. 

 A large State like Minnesota has variable climates and soils. There are adapta- 

 tions for all that must be studied. Russia, as said by Prof. Budd, is a great 

 country. It has its counterparts probably for all the climates of our Ameri- 

 can apple belt. It is not enough to say Russian. The Northwest has lost 

 thirteen years by not knowing this. We must know from what part of Rus- 

 sia. It is not enough to say Minnesota. We must know what part of Min- 

 nesota. Is it where the dry, cold arctic winds sweep up the valley of the Red 

 River of the North ? Is it where the moist winds of the Gulf of Mexico or 

 the St. Lawrence and the great lakes, the hot air of the southwestern plains, 

 or the mild breezes from the Pacific, fugitives from the Chinook, squeezed 

 of their vapors in passing over the steppes or the forests of the Rocky moun- 

 tains, mostly or in part pi'evail? Is it on the wide prairie sweeps, the blutf 

 lands with their air drainage above as well as below ground, the timber and 

 prairie openings, or the dense forests of the big woods? All these are ques- 

 tions which must be studied in order to make fruit raising profitable in Min- 

 nesota 



A man must not begrudge a dollar a year for his State Horticultural So- 

 ciety, or two or three for the Mississippi Valley Society, to secure him the 

 reports to read on mH the vital points in the business, and pay twentj' dollars 

 for a worthless bill of trees that the books would have warned him of. 



Selection of a few only of the hardiest for general orcharding is important 

 for many reasons, but these reasons are so open and palpable that it .seems 

 almost a waste of time to mention them. A man must go for sure things to 

 some or the main extent in order to keep his courage up. Everlasting fail- 

 ure or liability to it will beat the toughest orchard crank in time, as it does 

 the Keeley motor or the inventor of perpetual motion. The man in Wis- 

 consin who said several years ago before the Wealthy was found out, that if 

 he was going to set out another orchard of one hundred trees, he would ])lant 

 ninety-nine Duchess and one Duchess of Oldenburg, was not far from right. 

 That would be sure to be profitiible. The only orchardists in Minnesota to- 

 day who are making any money in apples are the ones who did about the 

 same thing, or who divided their plantings between the Duchess and the 

 Wealthy. There are many other sorts coming favorably into notice — seed- 

 lings and imported trees — that promise to show efjual, in some respects su- 

 jjerior merit. It even looks as though we are on the eve of a sudden exten- 



