TRANSACTIONS OF WARSAW HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 34 1 



Reports of committees show the following condition of crops, and so 

 forth : 



REPORT ON FLORICULTURE. 



The Annuals had not done well because of the drouth, though the verbenas and 

 pansies, and some other favorites, are beginning to look better since the cool nights 

 and heavy dews. The Perennials were a failure; house-plants that had been kept in 

 the house looked well, but those who had put them in the garden with the idea of 

 strengthening the plants had missed it this year. The bulbs and tubers were not so 

 much affected by the drouth. The gladioli and tuberoses were thrifty and promise to 

 bloom well. All climbers, such as the Maderia vine, cypress, etc , were very thrifty. 



HATTIE DORMAN. 



. ORCHARD REPORT. 



Hundreds and thousands of apple-trees, injured by the severe cold of last winter, 

 died during the drouth of July, and many others are in a decline, and will eventually 

 die. Orchards situated at the foot of the Mississippi blutf and on creek bottoms suffered 

 most severely. In some orchards so situated half of the trees are dead. 



It is a singular fact that some of the varieties considered most hardy suffered more 

 than those reputed to be tender. As far as our own observation extends, Ben Davis 

 and Janet have been the greatest sufferers. 



The crop of winter apples will be light, but the present probabilities are that the 

 quality will be good. Some orchards will yield half or two-thirds of a crop of Winesap 

 of better quality than we have had for many years, and even the White Winter Pearmain, 

 White Bellflower and Newark Pippin, that had been given up as worthless, will produce 

 a partial crop of good fruit. 



We had the pleasure last week of visiting the oldest orchard of grafted fruit in 

 this part of the State, and probably between the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. (Seed- 

 ling orchards had been previously planted by Gov. Wood, at Quincy, and by the early 

 French settlers, near Peoria.) To Mrs. J. R. Sheriden, the lady who now owns the 

 place, we are indebted for the following interesting particulars: About 1824-5 Abel 

 Casto settled on the Iowa side of the river, near the head of the rapids, and planted an 

 orchard and nursery, but his family being visited by sickness and death he became 

 discouraged and in 1829 bought a tract of land on this side of the river, two or three 

 miles below where Nauvoo now stands, and moved his orchard and nurserj' onto it. 



A few unsightly stumps of these trees planted half a century ago remain, with just 

 vitality enough to produce a few specimens of knotted and worthless fruit, but sufficient 

 to show what the varieties are. Little Romanite, Sweet Romanite, Pennock, Yellow 

 Bellflower, Newtown Pippin, Winter Red and Vandevere seem to predominate. A 

 later generation of trees, planted in 1855, are of nearly the same varieties and are of 

 no profit to the owner. 



We found two old seedling pear-trees, forty or fifty feet high, on the site of the old 

 nursery, that are worthy of special note. Although weather-beaten and scarred by the 

 storms of fifty winters, they produce annual crops of fruit and look as though they 

 might live and bear another half century. We also found near the house, at the foot of 

 the bluff, a pear-tree, contemporaneous with the second generation of apple-trees, that 

 was bending beneath its burden of ripening fruit and showing no signs of blight or 

 disease of any kind. Mrs. Sheriden informed us that it had not failed to bear for many 

 years. These facts seem to teach us that if by any means the blight can he prevented 

 pear-trees will be longer lived and mo-e regular bearers than apple-trees, and this 

 delicious fruit be as easily grown as Ben Davis apples. 



A. C. HAMMOND. 

 J. T. JOHNSON. 



