296 AmJFAL REPORT 



KAZAJT AT LAST — ITS MANITOBA CLIMATB AND "MICHIGAN" APPLES. 



The climate of Kazan I fail to comprehend. That its winters 

 should be cold we could readily guess. Tn extreme winters the 

 mercury congeals and the mildest winter has periods when the 

 temperature reaches thirty to forty degrees, with a very dry air 

 and a great uncertainty as to the time when the first snows cover 

 .the ground. Sometimes great damage occurs, even in the forests, 

 by extreme low temperature in December, with no snow on the 

 ground, [rregular and very severe winters we might expect, but 

 the summer conditions are less easy to understand. For instance, 

 the Volga opens and closes about the time our records show on the 

 the Mississippi at McGregor, and the aggregate summer heat is 

 about that of northern Iowa. Yet Kazan is on a great interior 

 plain twelve degrees north of Des Moines. 



Combine this fact with the extreme aridity of the summer air, 

 the tendency to drought, and the very low temperature and vari- 

 able air of winter, and we have conditions very similar to those of 

 northwest Iowa, only more severe. Yet without exception, all the 

 villages we visited are literally a7tiid great orchards with fine look- 

 ing, and really very good apples. To find such extensive orchards 

 in the far interior and far northern province of Kazan, surprised 

 us as much as to have found them in Siberia. Even at Moscow we 

 were told that but few apples were grown so far north as Kazan. 

 I wish I could have a delegation of about one hundred of the intel- 

 ligent farmers of northwestern Iowa here for one week to go with 

 me over the ground I have traversed in this district. I have seen 

 hundreds of orchards literally loaded with finer, smoother fruit 

 than I ever saw in central Iowa, growing on an even lot of healthy, 

 hardy trees. 



The inspection of such a delegation would do more to convince 

 the people that we must quit fooling ivith the south of Europe fruits 

 than my talk will do in forty years. But I find the facts to far ex- 

 ceed my expectations. 



We find much trouble in the identification of varieties. Widely 

 separated localities have different names for the same varieties, or 

 wholly a new set of names not known perhaps fifty miles distant. 

 But one thing is much in our favor. The late keeping varieties 

 are transported long distances by rivers and railroads, and have 

 acquired commercial names. The summer varieties are too numer- 

 ous to attempt a system of classification, only with a few favorite 

 sorts. The winter varieties v;e will be able to study in a satis- 



