3:4 STATE HOETICULTUBAL SOCIETY. 



comes from a different botanical region, especially if from another con- 

 tinent. A seedling must find favor at its place of origin, if at all, for 

 the reason that it is especially adapted to the conditions of soil and 

 climate prevailing there. It succeeds there because its constitution is 

 fitted to those conditions, audit follows of necessity that the chances 

 are strongly against it being equally well adapted to succeed under the 

 quite different conditions of a different state or country. 



All this was specially emphasized the past season ( 1896 ) of unin- 

 terrupted sun, which was so favorable to the rapid increase of insect 

 life, so that we may properly consider this as one of the beneficial les- 

 sons taught by our lean year. The season was not without its uses 

 also in winnowing out from our lists undeserving varieties. I will not 

 attempt to account for the facts observed, but it was true on my 

 grounds, as I pointed out to many visitors, that foreign varieties of 

 fruit of late introduction suffered far worse from insect ravages than 

 the average of our old sorts cultivated and acclimated here for a quar- 

 ter century or more. 



The Eussian apples, both in nursery and in orchards, were exam- 

 ples strikingly in point. There was an unusual activity of the leaf rol- 

 ler and leaf skeletonizer, and but for the spraying apparatus, the in- 

 jury would have been irreparable. 



In one nursery of two-year trees, one might readily distinguish 

 two hundred yards away the rows of Russians of the Hibernal family, 

 intermingled with the rows of various older sorts, the broad leaves of 

 the Russians turning red and dry under the same care which produced 

 a fair degree of health and vigor in the leaves of the others. I can 

 only account for this lack of resistance on the part of the foreigners 

 by the fact that our conditions must have been* in some manner less 

 favorable to their vigor than the conditions of their native places. 



One of our most famous physiologists affirms that it takes at least 

 four generations of men to adapt a people to the conditions of a con- 

 tinental change of climate, and that the adaptation is secured only at 

 the expense of much mortality and a profound change of physical and 

 nervous organization. Now, it is a plain fact that a tree must be far 

 less able to withstand the vicissitudes of a change than a man who 

 may vary at will his food and dress and shelter, ais seems to suit his 

 physical needs, while the tree or plant is rooted to one place and sub- 

 ject to the full force of every unfavorable influence. I have thought 

 it advisable to grub out the last of my Russian plums and cherries, 

 and I believe that the last of the pears and apples, save one or two, 



must share the same fate C. L. Watrous, Iowa, in Orange Judd 



Farmer. 



