48 
At last a dry autumn, followed’ by a severe winter, cleaned these out, 
roots and all. 
IT next heard of a-variety of the Native Plums called the Miner ; heard 
a great mass of testimony as to its being thoroughly hardy, entirely 
“curculio proof,” and yearly productive of good, large, salable fruit. 
I procured 500 trees of this variety and planted them in an orchard, the 
spring of 1862, and, with the exception noted farther on, these trees have 
not to this day matured one peck of fruit. This variety is about half 
way between or a hybrid between the extreme types of the two species 
firstmentioned. I next learned of the celebrated plum of the Southern or 
Chickasaw type, known as the “ Wild Goose” plum, in 1867. I procured 
_afew scions of it, and top-grafted them in the center of the Miner or- 
chard. Fiveof these grafts grew, and the next spring the grafts bloomed 
freely and set a large amount of fruit, nearly every one of which ma- 
tured fully. The great, bright red oblong fruit hung on ropes on these 
grafts, and I was so excited over them that I nearly went plum .crazy. 
They ripened the first half of July‘and they were snapped up in our 
little town at 25 cents per quart. In my dreams I saw golden visions ; 
a fortune from plums stared me in the face. Thinking all was right with 
this plum, so soon as [ could obtain trees I planted 800 of them in 
orchard. They grew and flourished grandly, bloomed, and they set 
fruit profusely, but it all fell off when quite small. Both these Miner 
and Wild Goose orchards were planted in a solid mass, no other trees 
of the almond family being among or near them, except as hereafter 
noted. 
I have said the grafts set in Miner bore profusely, so did the trees in 
which they were grafted, ¢. ¢., of Miner Plums, as did the trees next ad- 
joining, and matured their fruit perfectly. These plum orchards were 
both a continuation of a large orchard of hardy cherries. The rows of 
both varieties of these plums next to the cherries have every year matured 
more or less plums, Some seasons quite a crop. With these exceptions, no 
other trees in these orchards have ever brought one plum to maturity. 
These two orchards were some distance away and so were not observed 
very closely. In carrying on a general Nursery I gathered here many va- 
rieties of Native Plums, and propagated them quite extensively for sale. 
Trees of the leading varieties on their own roots were planted isolated 
from other plums, so as to obtain suckers. The varieties so planted 
were Wild Goose, Miner, Forest Garden, DeSoto, Weaver (though not 
to be true to name), Langdon, Newman, and many others, none of 
which have as yet matured a plum except the Newman. About the 
same time, or sixteen to eighteen years ago, I planted the varieties 
named above, together with several others, thickly in rows, the rows 
four feet apart, with the several varieties intermingled or “all mixed up,” 
but at some points in the rows all of one variety with no other quite 
near, and these trees have not failed of bearing and maturing a full crop 
each year during the last twelve years. Again soon after this I planted 
