Annual Meeting — Report of Secretary 113 



and carefully barreled, will last till nearly spring. It is as hardy 

 as any except, perhaps, the Duchess. The crabs are hardy, of 

 course, but we must have something better. I fruited two trees of 

 the Minkler this season which are very nice. "Will report further 

 next season. 



NINTH DISTRICT A. J. PHILLIPS, WEST SALEM. 



Counties. — La Crosse, Trempealeau, Jackson, Buffalo, and val- 

 leys of Chippewa and St. Croix. This is hardly deserving the 

 name it bears, as it is hardly a township report. Were reports 

 made out by some qualified person in each county, they would be 

 made more accurate and interesting. The prospect last spring, 

 so far as I know and can hear in this district, was good for a fine 

 crop of fruit, but a frost in May, after apples were formed on the 

 trees, froze them up, and only in some high locations was there any 

 left. With the exception of a few plates, my apples were the only 

 ones on exhibition at the fair in La Crosse county. This state of 

 things was general over the district, as far as I have been able to 

 learn. Some trees were bought and set last spring, but the sales 

 this fall have been very light, owing perhaps to the hard times and 

 the low price of farm produce as much as to the failure and de- 

 struction of the apple crop. 



Wild plums, too, were almost a total failure. The most exten- 

 sive orchardist in this district, to my knowledge, was the late F. 

 Fleischer, of La Crosse, who died last fall; he had some five thou- 

 sand trees of many varieties set in his orchard, and Mr. Wilcox in- 

 forms me that, as a general thing, the trees look well. He was 

 located on a bluff and in a valley, near the city of La Crosse. His 

 health failing in the editorial room, he commenced horticultural 

 pursuits to obtain more out door exercise, but he did not com- 

 mence soon enough; his disease was so seated that his new and 

 pleasant occupation could not arrest it. There is also a vacant 

 chair across the river from this district; P. A. Jewell has passed 

 away, like many others, just as he was placed in a comfortable 

 position to live, and just as he was beginning to see his hopes real- 

 ized in the fruiting of new varieties, which he thought were espe- 

 cially adapted to the northwest. Peace to his ashes! I think of him 

 when I look at my fine Wealthy trees, which he sent me in the 

 spring of 1875, and which fruited for the first time the past season. 



