How to Get a Race of Hardy Fruit.-ifor the Nort/uvest. 131 



record, as the vegetation unerringly does, the permanent characteristics of 

 its climate." The climates of western Europe and western America are 

 duplicates, while corresponding eastern shores bear like relations. 



Asa Gray tells us that about latitude 47° the trees of the Pacific extend 

 eastward and mingle with their cousins of the Atlantic, while at 37° there is 

 a broad hiatus of a thousand miles between the two floras. The trees of the 

 Pacific and of western Europe generally fail before maturity, even if suc- 

 cessful through infancy on the prairies. Whether the trees of Russia will 

 in the end fare much better appears more doubtful every year. 



Secretary A. C. Hammond, of the Illinois Horticultural Society, says in 

 his last report : " I have tested many of the Russians. They do well until 

 they come into bearing, when they almost invariably blight and die. Even 

 1 1 the trees grow the fruit is too poor to be of much value. South of latitude 

 42° they are not wanted." Prominent horticulturists in Ohio and Missouri 

 have lately expressed themselves to much the same effect. 



Thus far the most successful Russian orchard in America is in the tira- 

 l)ered region of southern Wisconsin. The prairies have never shown such 

 success. But this is no nev/ experiment, it is only an old one revived. 



More than forty years ago President Berckmans, of the American Pom 

 ological Society, tested, with his father, in Belgium, about 500 varieties of 

 South Russian and Hungarian apples. In 1845 the most promising of these 

 were brought to America. President Bei'ckmans now writes that none of 

 them proved good keepers, and, so far as he knows, the race has entirely dis- 

 appeared from the region of the experiment. 



In 1852 or 1853, scions of many of these were sent to Ellwanger & Barry, 

 at Rochester, N. Y. They now say that after more than thirty years of trials 

 and importations from the best known sources, they have abandoned all hopes 

 of finding good quality or good keepers, or, indeed, of finding anj^ sorts worth 

 cultivating anywhere, unless they will succeed where others fail. No reli- 

 able winter-keepers hiive thus far been found among the late importation in 

 Iowa, nor any of high quality. 



Many scores have been shown in August and September, but, with few 

 exceptions, the flavor of the Cossack hangs round them all. No rivals of 

 such apples as Early Joe.Benoni, Dyer, Porter and many others have been 

 shown, while of a score out of our noble old list of winter-keepers, it must 

 be confessed there is absolutely none among all the Ru.«sians to fill their 

 places. While many Russian apples have succeeded fairly well in nurseries 

 where our oldest sorts have latelj^ been crippled, yet the most promising of 

 them have shown in nurseries from Minnesota to Missouri, among other 

 weaknesses, a strange infirmity in respect to the needful nursery pruning 

 at the age of two or three years, turning black at the cut, whether made early 

 or late in the season. For this reason one of the most extensive growers of 

 Russians in Iowa has lately suggested the possible advisability of growing 

 Russians without nursery pruning. 



As has been pointed out by more than one, this inability to endure 



