244 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTURAL 



ence of lust winter and this winter, what varieties of apples shall we 

 have left, and what can we recommend? 



T see by your last Report very few varieties of apples mentioned 

 as successful — the leading one. Ben Davis, good for nothing but to 

 sell. Last winter cleaned it out of Wisconsin except in rerij favor- 

 ((hJp locations. 



The line dividing your interests from ours is so line I never 

 could see it. Have often stejjped over it, but never could see it. The 

 State line is very small. Your interests are ours; your adapted lists 

 ought to be safe for our southern counties to follow. We more than 

 ever feel the need of districting the State, and making lists of all 

 kinds of fruits that are particularly adapted to certain soils, eleva- 

 tions, and locations, and that may be safe for new beginners and old 

 fools to follow. 



Our most favorable locations are on the highest grounds we 

 have: — the mountains of Baraboo, the bluffs of Richland and La 

 Crosse counties (five hundred feet above the water courses), the lake 

 shore from Kenosha to Green Bay, and the timber ridges with clay 

 and limestone subsoil. In most other locations it is useless to plant 

 anything but the crabs. Duchess of Oldenburg, and Wealthy. 



Most farmers want their orchards right by the house, and no 

 matter what the trees want, there they are set usually to die. 



I know of no success, permanent, of any orchard that has not a 

 mixture of clay in the subsoil, and the more rock and the poorer the 

 soil for anything else, the more lasting the orchard. The worst 

 places for healthy orchards are our gravel bluffs and bottom lands. 

 In one case it is aU underdrained, and in the other it needs both un- 

 der-draining and surface -draining, and then it is not fit for trees. 



I hope the suggestions of your former secretary, as made in your 

 last volume, page 292. may have been carried out during the past 

 year, and that such committees are prejKired to report the conditions 

 of failure and success, soils, subsoils, and the appropriate list of fruits 

 that will best succeed on each. 



Small fruits, we all know, are not so very nice about where they 

 put their feet, still they have a choice, and that choice disregarded, 

 they prove a failure. Some varieties of strawberries succeed on all 

 soils, and while the Wilson can hardly be overfed, the Crescent on 

 the same diet would be ruined. Jucunda is worthless on light soil, 

 but a grand success on the right kind of clay, with the right kind of 

 treatment. Sour kinds do best in matted rows, while hills alone for 

 others. 



In reading the twenty-five pages of your last report devoted to 

 strawberries, T think only one writer mentions adaptation of soil to 

 varieties, and he mentions only o)U' kind of strawherrij adapted to- 

 four kinds of soil. I see most of your growers and writers have dis- 

 carded Wilson, yet three-cj[uarters of all the berries shipped into the 

 Chicago market are the much-despised Wilson. I have many cus- 



