Annual Meeting — Report of Secretary. 109 



caped spring frosts. We fruited the following, and they nearly all 

 matured nicely except where vines lost their foliage: Concord, Del- 

 aware, Tona, Agawam, Wilder, Massasoit, Lindley, Salem, Merri- 

 mack, Janesville, Worden and Hartford. Loss of foliage is most 

 complained of on Agawam and Delaware. Can it be attributed to 

 exclusion of air from the soil by excessive moisture, thus smother- 

 ing the rootlets'? If so, is not culture and thorough aeration of 

 the soil the remedy? 



Green Prolific and Wilson strawberries produced most of the fruit 

 in the home market, as far as we could judge. From four square 

 rods of Wilson, we last spring took 1000 plants, and, in season, 

 picked five bushels of berries as the third crop. Fully two-thirds 

 of our raspberries blighted when half grown; others lost less. 

 Plums, especially wild ones, usually abundant, were an entire 

 failure. Hope the curculio will starve out. 



Fruit Markets. — Early in the season home grown apples sold 

 here at $1.00 per bushel. Later, imported apples sold at $2.10 to 

 $2.50 per barrel. Grapes brought ten cents per pound in Richland 

 Center, and strawberries sold in their season at ten cents and a shill- 

 ing per quart, while in Milwaukee they retailed at $1.25 to $1.50 

 per 16 quarts crate. These facts suggest the possibilities of home 

 markets for country fruit growers. 



FIFTH DISTRICT E. W. DANIELS, AURORA VILLE. 



Counties. — Green Lake, Waushara, Marquette and Winne- 

 bago. I will endeavor, as in years past, to give you the scanty 

 amount of information I have from time to time gathered, in jour- 

 neyings through this fifth district. 



First, the west part of our county, Waushara, and a part of 

 Marquette, is too light a soil, except in a few favored localities, to 

 raise the native or large varieties of apples to any great extent. 

 But the Russian varieties, especially the Transcendent Crab, will 

 flourish on any sand bank, and furnish the only apples upon which 

 they can depend. But in the east half of Waushara, Green Lake 

 Winnebago and a small portion of Marquette counties, are loca- 

 tions unsurpassed for a good quality of apples, as our friends well 

 know by the exhibit at our fair. I have observed that the further 

 north the Talman Sweet will grow, the larger and fairer the fruit, 

 and less infested with the codling moth. 



