SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 259 



tried various methods of top and root pruning, to the extreme hurt 

 of the tree. Indeed, sir, I have extensive knowledge along this line, 

 so much so that I know myself to be a huge parasite in my own 

 garden/' 



''Know thyself is a task too great for attainment, while to 

 know one's ignorance, especially in the art of horticulture, is barely 

 attuinal)l(\ The gentleman just mentioned was evidently gaining a 

 fair knowledge of his own ignorance, and when his lesson is fairly 

 mastered, it may be said of him he has won a " good degree." 



Apparently a great failure is seen, in our belt of the State, in 

 the apple. Twenty years ago they were successfully grown. T saw 

 the finest grade of Yellow Bellflower sell for forty cents per bushel, 

 and fall apples for five cents per bushel, within a few miles of Peoria.. 

 The failure to grow good apples, and the decay of all our orchards, 

 seems a great loss. But has not this failure aided in giving to almost 

 every farm in Central Illinois a small fruit garden? The strawberry 

 bed is a success everywhere, and by the aid of Mason's jar this best 

 of fruit can be had on the table every day of the year. Did Shake- 

 peare think of this when he said: 



never resting time leads summer on 



To hideous winter, and confounds him there; 

 Sap. checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone. 



Beauty over-snowed and bareness everywhere: 

 Then,— were not summer's distillation left, 



A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass. 

 Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft 

 Nor it nor no remembrance what it was 

 But flowers distilled though they with winter meet. 

 Loose but their show their substance still lives sweet." 



The puzzle of how to grow good apples, remains to be solved. 

 The i)uzzle is a good one and benefits all who sincerely undertake to 

 solve it. 



The Concord grape, the Snyder blackberry and the Crescent 

 strawberry, are not as bad as they might have been. The Concord 

 made a few crops that came very near making the growing of a vine- 

 yard a losing business, but, what with mildew, rust, rot, insects and 

 neglect, it does now pay to give thought to grape culture. 



The Snyder blackberry gave a few crops that threatened the 

 fruit grower. One hundred and fifty bushels per acre, without any 

 more thought than is necessary to grow a crop of corn, was a rising 

 cloud bigger than a man's hand to nuiny. The unnatural pruning, 

 forcing the plant to quadruple its natural number of fruit Inuls, left 

 it an easy prey to the fungus scab and excessive low temperature. 

 Three years of failure has left this branch of the business in the 

 hands of those who like to think. 



Several years ago, how we looked for a strawberry plant that 

 could not be heaved out by the frost, burnt out by the sun, or 



