154 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



Take the plum humbug; put your finger on a kind that is relia- 

 ble. Where are the friends of the Hinkley? and oh! where is the 

 "Wild Goose?" 



It is a good thing to plant cherries; for one year in three you 

 may get enough to make the birds happy; if you sell any, or at- 

 tempt to can any, you are liable to the penalty of the law for " Cru- 

 elty to Birds." 



While currants can be bought annually at one dollar per bushel, 

 they will pay the consumers, but I would rather contract to fur- 

 nish fifty bushels of raspberries or strawberries at the same price 

 than currants. 



In the small fruits you are liable to humbug yourself. You buy 

 a choice kind and give it extra care; its success will lead you into 

 error, for as soon as you put it along side of the old sorts, and give 

 it like care, it fails. Of the ten thousand new varieties that have 

 originated in the last twenty years, what strawberry can equal the 

 Wilson? There are many who are claiming the position for some 

 favorite, but take the fact that the Wilson has never been planted, 

 or cared for, but it has paid, on all soils and every location, and with 

 all kinds of treatment; and it has fruited at the rate of five bush- 

 els to the square rod, yielding twenty- five quarts to a single pick- 

 ing to the square rod. This was done last summer on a bed bearing 

 its third crop, after the severe frost and without irrigation. As 

 I am a humbug (that is what my wife says), my foreman is ready 

 to testify to these facts; but as you may still think there is some 

 humbug about it, I will state that J. F. Morse and I. L. Jenks, 

 years ago on a strife, produced, the first, five bushels on a square 

 rod, and the last, four bushels and a half. The new varieties that 

 have come to the front in the last five years promise to beat the 

 Wilson, some in quantity, many in size and quality. The Great 

 American has produced the past season a strawberry measuring 

 fourteen and one-half inches in circumference, and on the origina- 

 tor's ground, one hand picked twenty-two quarts of this variety in 

 twenty minutes; but it is is not doing anything like as well as this 

 elsewhere. It needs high culture, clay soil, in hills. Of the com- 

 parative merits of thirty varieties, I can tell you by the fourth of 

 July next, as I have over half a million plants in nice condition for 

 fruit. In raspberries there is about the same field for humbug as 

 in strawberries. I would not advise any one to invest over a hun- 

 dred dollars a vearin new fruit. 



