198 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Golden Russet, is really the Hunt Russet. The American 

 Golden Russet is an apple that should ripen, if the descriptions 

 in the book are correct, in December, and the Hunt Russet is 

 certainly as late as February or March. That apple originated, 

 undoubtedly, in the town in which I live, sorne 200 years 

 ago. There are trees in that town now, that an old gentleman, 

 who would have been 102 or 103 years old had he lived until 

 now, told me, some twenty years ago, his grandfather planted, 

 which are still bearing apples. That originated on a warm 

 soil, and the trees will not produce anything on cold, wet 

 soil. That is the Hunt Russet. There has been a good deal of 

 confusion in regard to the Russets. The Hunt Russet is a 

 conical apple. The Roxbury Russet is flat, and, unless it 

 grows in the sun, with no brown color, and it is usually 

 covered with a greenish russet, and holds on very late in the 

 spring. Except for its late keeping, it is a very poor apple. 

 It keeps late, and that is the only desirable point it has, in 

 my judgment. 



Now, I say, speaking of the desirability of raising fruits 

 adapted to your climate here, I do not think you can find a 

 New York apple or a Western apple that is really a success 

 in Massachusetts. I do not know of one. I have a few 

 trees of the Northern Spy, and like the apple very much. 

 After it has attained the age of twenty or twenty-five years, 

 it will set fruit enough, but the coddling moths like that 

 apple so well that they will destroy a large portion of the 

 fruit. When I get a tree full of apples, the fruit is compara- 

 tively poor in qualit}'. That remark in regard to Western 

 apples applies to all their other fruits. Take a strawMjcrry 

 originated at the West, and 3'OU will find (I do not know an 

 exception) that while they grow large, they will be, many of 

 them, poor in quality. They look at size at the West, rather 

 than quality. Their strawberries do not succeed well here ; 

 perhaps ours do not at the West. 



Now, I have made some experiments which have been 

 interesting to me, and experiments, too, in regard to growino" 

 strawberries. I have, within the last fifteen years, fruited 

 somewhere from twenty to thirty thousand seedling straw- 

 berries, and tested them. That is, I found a large portion of 

 them so poor that they would be condemned at once, and 



