WINTER MEETING. . 419 



principal among these, as I shall attempt to show, are climate, unsuitable 

 varieties and wrong methods of propagation. 



CLIMATE. 



"In what" you will ask, " does this small part of the State differ from the 

 rest, where apples have generally been so successfnl?" You will bear in 

 mind that it is only, or mainly, the influence of the great lake that gives 

 Michigan its advantage in fruitgrowing over those States lying further west 

 — Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa. It is well known that when the 

 thermometer marks a degree of cold of twenty or more below zero at Mil- 

 waukee, Racine and Chicago it seldom goes so low on this side of the lake by 

 ten to fifteen degrees; and, although, as we go inland, the cold increases in 

 intensity, yet it is never (from its being more fully surcharged with moisture, 

 it may be) so destructive to tree-life as the more dry as well as the more 

 intensely cold air of the before-mentioned Slates. 



By referring to the map it will be seen that this extreme lower portion of 

 the State, where the apple crop has so often failed, does not share in the 

 ameliorating and protecting influence of this great, never-freezing body of 

 water, at least not to any extent, particularly at those times when most need- 

 ed, from the fact that our most trying storms, those that bring the greatest 

 degree of cold, are from the southwest. And you will take notice, also, that 

 those regions where the failures have been most persistent, being interspersed 

 originally with small prairies, approach in character to the larger prairie 

 regions of Illinois, where the cold winters more than twenty years ago cleared 

 out their orchards of most of the eastern-grown kinds, leaving only a few 

 inferior sorts, such as the Willow Twig and Ben Davis, of southern origin — 

 varieties which are their main dependence to-day. 



Then, as influencing climate, it may be shown that these regions have been 

 growing more and more bleak year by year, from the cutting down of the 

 rather scanty primeval forests, the protection from which enable the early 

 orchards to bear fair crops, while the lack of this protection and the extreme 

 cold of our recent winters have so injured the trees, when not killed outright, 

 as to prevent the production of fruit, even when there was sufficient vitality 

 left to insure abundant bloom. 



ONSUITABLE VAEIETIES. 



While it is undoubtedly true that the failure of the apple crop in the 

 regions referred to is principally due, as compared to the rest of the State, 

 to the greater vicissitudes of climate, from the causes pointed out above, the 

 climate as such is not unfriendly to the apple if only we have suitable varie- 

 ties. But many suitable varieties we have not. Varieties to succeed must 

 be as a rule the product of the soil and the climate. At least it can be shown 

 that the varieties succeeding best in any climate, if not produced in that 

 climate, were produced under the same or similar climatic conditions 

 elsewhere. 



When this region was first planted to orchards, men set such trees as they 

 could get, such as the nurserymen had to sell or the tree-peddler brought 

 them. If from the east they brought with them their preferences among 

 varieties that succeeded there. Hence it happened that the Rhode Island 



