258 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



it is not an overstatement to say, that during the berry picking 

 season, two bushels of berries are used for every one of potatoes. 

 They are on the table for each and every one to eat, just as many 

 or as few as they choose. That seems to me to be the true plan 

 to pursue with regard to them. I do not imagine that I shall live 

 to see such a day, but if this paper shall be the means of awaken- 

 ing even a few of our farmers and other friends to the great value 

 as well as the great comfort of making this delicious fruit. one of 

 our main articles of food during its season, instead of an occa- 

 sional luxury, as is too often the.case, I shall feel that I have been 

 many times repaid for the time spent in its preparation. 



TOP GRAFTING OF CRAB APPLE TREES. 



Read by Oliver Gibbs, Jr., before the La Crosse Horticultural Society. 



The improvement of fruit trees by grafting the limbs is as old 

 as civilization, and the process is familiar to all residents of fruit 

 regions. la the eastern and southern states, the best sorts of 

 apples in the old orchards are called "grafted fruit," to distinguish 

 them from the produce of the trees as they originally stood, which 

 were all seedlings. It is no uncommon sight there to see several 

 kinds of apples growing on the grafted limbs of the same tree, 

 and when a new variety is to be tried, the fir?t step is generally to 

 graft it somewhere in the orchard. By this process a test can be 

 made some years sooner than by growing the new trees from the 

 root-graft, as the top grafts bear fruit in two or three years' time, 

 while the root-graft is in the same period only got ready for trans- 

 planting from the nursery row, and must then have from two to 

 five years' further growth before it will show its fruit. The graft- 

 ing of common apples upon crab trees has had one general diffi- 

 culty to contend with, and that was, in the beginning, the slen- 

 derer, weaker growth of the crab, their root-*, bodies and limbs not 

 beinc strong enough to carry the heavier growths of the common 

 apple. But this trouble has been lessened and in respect to some 

 varieties almost entirely removed by the improvement in the crab 

 varieties, themselves. The Siberians grew stronger than the wild 

 crabs, and then came the Transcendents and Hislops, stronger than 

 the Siberians; so that now we find, by several years' trial in 



