200 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



few Kentish. Only about seventy per cent are in good healthy condition. 

 They are beginning to bear, but the birds get all the fruit except that tied up 

 in cloths. The plums were in bearing this year for the first time. The trees 

 were loaded with very fine looking fruit, which had been thinned very freely. 

 There are but seven sorts in all, beside a few seedlings. The curculio had 

 been kept in check by the jarring process. The system of culture is the same 

 as with the pears, except that the trees are headed two or three feet above the 

 ground. 



It is a matter much to be regretted that there is not a larger area of land 

 here, suitable not only for the extension of these orchards of the finer fruits, 

 but for the growth of apples as well. All the more important varieties that 

 succeed well in our State should be grown here for the purpose of rendering 

 students familiar with their forms and habits of growth, and to enable any one 

 interested in fruit and fruit-growing to observe for himself the characteristics 

 of the different varieties. 



No attempt has been made of late years to grow peaches. Experiments are 

 being tried by planting the seed from trees having the yellows. Only one of 

 these seeds has grown, and this tree shows no sign of the disease as yet. It has 

 been growing three years. 



From the peach orchard we proceeded to the vineyard. This has been but 

 recently set. It is north of Professor Carpenter's house and between the 

 orchard just described and the arboretum and the nursery farther east. There 

 are eighty varieties, mostly hardy, at the college. There are forty of Haskell's 

 seedlings. There are three hundred of the college seedlings in one place and 

 forty in another. About one-third of these have winter-killed or died from 

 other causes. They have not fruited yet and seem to be mostly inferior plants. 



Adjoining this vineyard is a plat of about 300 seedling strawberries, fruit- 

 ing this year for the first time. About one-tenth seemed worthy of further 

 trial, — perhaps none of them worthy of a name yet. The pistillate varieties 

 seemed the finest. 



From the vineyard we passed to the arboretum and nursery, a plantation of 

 two hundred and eighty species of trees and shrubs, allowed to grow in rows as 

 planted. These rows have been thinned somewhat for planting about the 

 grounds. The silver maple has outgrown all others in the same length of 

 time. The hardy catalpa has grown nearly as fast, and the butternut has 

 proved a very rapid grower. Sugar maples, elms, birches and many other 

 native trees are making a fine growth. Samples of hedge plants, such as honey 

 locust, barberry, spirea, etc., are being tried. Several sorts of wild apples, 

 cherries, and plums from the Bussey institute, besides several kinds of foreign 

 wild cherries, are growing in the nursery. Some experiments are being tried 

 with budded peach trees, compared with seedlings left where they were planted. 



There are one hundred seedling currants planted from seeds of different va- 

 rieties. A few are beginning to bear. There are also a large number of goose- 

 berry seedlings from the swamp species and from the upland. Some from the 

 upland species are not much prickly, and some are entirely smooth. Some 

 are growing from seeds of the upland species crossed with Houghton's Seedling. 

 Some of these are in bearing, but do not seem superior to other seedlings in 

 bearing. Some are very fine, however, and seeds have been planted from the 

 most promising. 



On our way from the arboretum to the new botanical laboratory, we passed 

 the sample plats of grasses, two hundred and eighty in number, all labeled. 

 Some are simply curiosities, but the majority are of value in some way as for- 



