Winter Meeting. 265 



at our state fair. We had good peaches wherever there were trees, and 

 there were quite a number of the trees that did pull through the hard 

 winter of two or three years ago. Our people are very enthusiastic in 

 planting peaches and cherries, and now they are beginning to replant 

 their vineyards ; they are beginning to realize the fact that we can't de- 

 pend upon New York grapes when we can produce them at home just 

 as cheaply as they can in New York and just as good quality, and our 

 people are keeping pace with the adjoining states on all these lines, and 

 we are quite enthusiastic, although we are not so favorably located as 

 you are in Missouri and Kansas in regard to climate. 



Our State Horticultural Society convenes in Des Moines on next 

 Tuesday and I wish to extend a cordial invitation and an urgent invita- 

 tion to you all to come up and join us and help us out. We will try to 

 make you feel at home. We will treat you kindly, and we will give you 

 a chance to be questioned, as you have questioned me here, and we will 

 put some hard questions to you doubtless, and we would be glad to have 

 you come up there and help us out, and answer those questions. 



President Murray. — Now ladies and gentlemen, we have a gentle- 

 man present here who was sent to Europe to look over their fruits from 

 a scientific standpoint. I am going to call on him, too. I wish to call on 

 Prof. Von Schrenk, who has just returned from Europe, and he will 

 tell us briefly what he saw of the fruits of Europe and their prospects. 



Prof. H. von Schrenk. — One thing that I was impressed with most, 

 in going around through the various European countries, was the uni- 

 versal saying, whenever I spoke of fruits or anything of that sort, "We 

 understand that you have apples and things of that kind on your table 

 once every day, how is that ?" It always provoked a sort of smile when 

 I came to look around and saw that apples and fruits of that character 

 to them were rather considered a great luxury. I wanted to buy a pine- 

 apple in one of the larger cities, and I could not find one, until I finally 

 found one in a florist's shop. That ought to be a good deal of encour- 

 agement, and more cannot be said to the apple growers and fruit growers 

 of this country, than that is a field that has been practically untouched 

 as yet. « 



I didn't have much time to look into the question of apples particu- 

 larly, but what time I did have, T went around through the markets of 

 London and Berlin and St. Petersburg, and the very largest cities of 

 Europe, and I was surprised at the general absence of fruits of the char- 

 acter, which we know in our small towns. The only place where I did 

 find a great many apples, strange to say, was in St. Petersburg. The 

 Russians are very fond of apples; they grow a great many of them, and 

 they bring them down in vast boat loads — down their rivers, and dump 



