138 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



rection. I promise a faithful compliance with all his wishes and 

 try again. After two years I succeed in getting about a single 

 handful of berries of good size, but bad shape, and that taste about 

 like a mixture of rain water and vinegar. I complied with his re- 

 quest, to neither sell nor give them away; and did as I have done 

 with many others both before and since — dug them all out, being 

 very careful not to have one left, and used them for manure; as 

 that was the only way by which I could get even the slightest re- 

 turn from them. 



Thus it has been year after year, each new variety resulting in 

 anew disappointment and vexation, to say nothing of the loss of 

 time and money, until a few years since, when I received a lot of 

 plants from the department at Washington. There were two vari- 

 eties. One was marked " Wilson's Albany Seedling," the other, 

 "No. 2." What that meant, I did not then, nor do I yet know. 

 I was somewhat surprised to learn that our government should go 

 to the expense of growing and distributing a variety that, if not 

 already in use by every grower in the country, could readily be ob- 

 tained by all, and at a very small expense. Still, as they seemed 

 to be entirely different from my Wilsons, I imagined it was a new 

 variety of them, that would combine all imaginable excellencies, 

 free from the defects that are acknowledged to belong to our or- 

 dinary Wilson. They had come just in time. We had just fin- 

 ished setting two or three new varieties that had come from the 

 East, and had a choice spot left where we could, and did set them, 

 with all the care and kindness that we were capable of showing 

 them. About nine-tenths of them returned our kindness by qui- 

 etly laying down and dying at once. Those that lived were 

 nursed with tenderest care, and in the course of fourteen or fifteen 

 months we gathered our first and last crop of fruit from them. The 

 so called Wilsons, were indeed different from any of the kind that 

 I had ever seen. 



They were very small and very hard, knotty, to a degree I have 

 never seen either before or since. In fact, there was scarcely a 

 fairly formed berry upon the vines, and only an occasional one of 

 any kind. I can imagine of only one advantage that they would 

 have possessed over the ordinary Wilson; and that is, if we had 

 shipped any of them (provided, we could have got any to ship), 

 they would undoubtedly have reached their place of destination in 



