STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 301 



have already reached this season about 1,000,000 pouds of 36 lbs. 

 each. Thirty-six million pounds from one shipping point, with 

 many others above and below, will give some idea of the extensive 

 orcharding of this region. Yet the varieties grown are astonish- 

 ingly few. The mayor gave us a list of 15 varieties of apples and 

 pears, which included all those grown in quantity for market. In 

 my judgment, after looking through the orchard, fully 75 per cent. 

 of all the apples shipped are Anis, (five varieties;) Malit, (two vari- 

 eties;) Blackwood, Winter Aport, Scrut and Zarsky Schip. The 

 eight first named are good keepers here, and would be in northern 

 Iowa. I doubt if any of them would keep longer than Jonathan 

 as far south as Des Moines. The quality of all these is above Wall- 

 bridge, and verj^ much superior to Ben. Davis. The apple known 

 as "scrut" in all this region, is everywhere the summer and early 

 autumn eating apple. It is large, handsome, conical, striped, sub- 

 acid, and seems to meet the popular demand much better than the 

 many apples of the Duchess type, which are found in limited quan- 

 tity in all orchards large and small. The Zarsky Schip is a fine- 

 looking yellow sweet apple of really excellent quality for eating or 

 cooking. The sale of this variety in the northern market at Nishny 

 would astonish our people who will not look at a sweet apple. If 

 it will grow as handsome rich and juicy with us, it will be popular 

 with our few lovers of sweet apples. Some of the later pears are 

 now getting ready for eating, and we find some of the nearly round 

 varieties of the northern Bergamot type decidedly good, but not 

 quite up to well ripened Flemish Beauty. The hardiness of these 

 northern pears is surprising. The seedling varieties are used for 

 street and park trees in the most trying situations, where even the 

 northern poplars are now taking on the sear and yellow leaf on 

 account of the long continued drought. It has not rained in many 

 weeks. The sod of pasture and meadow is as brown as in Novem- 

 ber, and the air is dry, and the dust as fine as in the Sahara Desert, 

 yet these dark foliaged pear trees have every leaf perfect and show 

 off finely in contrast with the white poplars with which they are 

 often planted. 



I write these lines on a window-sill at the wharf, while waiting 

 for the boat delayed on account of the very low water of the Volga 

 above here. As I look out, strings of carts are passing all loaded 

 with apples, put in boxes, and made firm by cords skillfully drawn 

 around them in both ways. At Nishny we saw thousands of these 

 boxes filled with summer and fall apples in good condition for eat- 

 ing. They came out in far better shape than from our barrels. 



