i36 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



they fruited in later years and my conclusion was that the sand- 

 cherry was adapted to the sand hills, had become adapted to 

 that locality through ages and would not do as well elsewhere. 



The next year I was out in the hills in May and captured a pair 

 of fawns of the Blacktail deer. These became a beautiful pair of 

 pets but later in the season they became very destructive of 

 the garden "truck" and finally showed a tendency to wander 

 away and not come up at night and so in September when an 

 itinerent fruit tree man came soliciting orders and wanted the 

 fawns, I exchanged one of them for a bill of nursery stock, and 

 on the list were two varieties of cherries. Early Richmond and 

 late Richmond. These were planted the following spring and 

 that was my first experience with the cultivated variety of fruit. 



These trees did well and later were loaded with fruit. The 

 next season after came a very severe hailstorm which destroyed 

 all my start of an orchard with the exception of one late Rich- 

 mond cherry. This tree was also stripped of its limbs but I 

 cut off the stubs of limbs. A new growth came out the next 

 season and thereafter for many seasons was almost invariably 

 loaded with fruit. 



I did not plant any more fruit trees owing to being discouraged 

 by the damage caused by hail until 1898. In the spring of that 

 year I had some correspondence with Prof. J. L. Budd of 

 Ames, Iowa, recently deceased. He had several new varieties 

 of cherries and other fruit and offered to send me several trees 

 of each variety for test purposes, I to report to experiment 

 station the results. By and on his recommendation he sent me 

 four Vladimir, four Sldanka, four Spate Morello, four Bessara- 

 bia, four Griotto Du Nord cherries two years old. These were 

 planted the spring of 1898. They were given good cultivation 

 and made a vigorous growth. Some scattering fruit was on 

 the trees the season of 1902 but not enough to form any base 

 for an opinion as to their merits. The spring of 1903 the trees 

 were loaded with bloom as full as seemed in any way possible 

 for trees to be, but on the 29th of April, there came a storm of 

 sleet, ice and snow with such cold that only here and there was 

 a fruit bud that survived the ordeal and again was our hopes of 

 fruit blasted. The spring of 1904 however proved moi-e propit- 

 ious and the trees were full of bloom and set a great abundance 



