256 State Horticultural Society. 



crop has been sold and I expect there are not enough apples in there for 

 the children this winter in that whole section. Bu)^ers came in there and 

 paid enormous prices any way they could get apples — in the barrel, in the 

 wagon, on the trees or any other way, and they paid big prices for them ; 

 peaches the same way. They bought all the peaches and took them off. 

 We have not had to consign anything from that country through any 

 commission men ; the people are happy ; they have got plenty of money. 



Prof. Smith of Chillicothe. — I wish to make a short verbal report. 

 I think we live exactly in the center of the drouth district. Our corn 

 will average on the uplands from five to ten bushels an acre, and in other 

 places won't make that. 



As to fruit, we have in Livingston county some very good orchards ; 

 most of the orchards are family orchards. . We have a few orchards of 

 from forty up to two hundred acres, but there are but a few orchards in 

 the county that will run over ten acres ; and yet we have, in ordinary 

 years, a good deal of fruit there. In that section trees that were over 

 ten years of age had absolutely no apples on them, in almost every in- 

 stance, and on the prairie land I didn't see a barrel of ajpples. The best 

 crop that we had there that I know anything about was about one- 

 third of a crop on the young trees. Those apples, when they ought to 

 have been half to two-thirds grown, were about one-fourth grown. The 

 drouth was finally broken by a little shower of rain, possibly two or 

 three showers' after the corn was ruined, and the apples started to grow 

 and they split open in all manner of shapes, and when we came to bar- 

 rel the apples from those young trees, about twenty-five per cent, of 

 them went to culls. In other places fifty per cent, went to culls, and 

 1 picked some off of my orchard of eight-year-old trees this year that went 

 eighty per cent to culls ; about the other twenty per cent, of them were 

 number two. If I had picked them ten days earlier, possibly I would have 

 gotten fifty per cent, number twos and possibly a little more than that. 

 This is an apple, however, that you say nothing about here. That is 

 the Willow Twig. It keeps badly, but it has made us more money 

 throughout that section than any other apple, barring the Ben Davis, 

 and this year had twice the amount of apples grown than the Ben Davis. 



Now, as to the peaches. We had some very good specimens. We 

 had some as fine as I saw that came from the southern slopes of the 

 Ozarks. We didn't have a very great many, for we have not so many 

 trees through that section. And the strawberries, we raised 'a good many 

 and got a good price until the drouth cut them short. We had a quar- 

 ter of a crop of strawberries, and will possibly have a fourth of a crop 

 next year, if we have a good season. Raspberries don't do well in our 

 country. However, Mr. R. T, Smith, and he is not a relative of mine. 



