388 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
now seventeen varieties on the list, and some of them are nothing extra. If 
the list of plums should be limited to, say, twenty varieties—perhaps fifteen 
varieties would be just as well—it would discourage the exhibiting (and 
growing as well) of those small varieties, and would result, IT am sure, in a 
much more numerous exhibit of our best kinds, which, of course, means our 
largest and most showy varieties. : 
The heavy rain of Dec. 9 extended to this part of the state and gave our 
orchard and fruit plants a much needed wetting. 
Windom, Minn., Dec. 15, 1890. : Dewain Cook. 
WORDS FROM AN OLD TIME WORKER.—I notice the departure 
of another old member, our P. M. Gideon, to join his neighbor Gould and a 
host of others who have gone before, while we of the advance class are wait- 
ing by the river’s brink to be ferried over the dark river a little later. 
From a sketch in our Florist’s Exchange of last week, it seems he was 
much older than I, his birth occurring in 1818. 
I used to see him many years ago, as he was often at my nursery, when 
that was the principal one of all the vast country where now they are 
counted by hundreds, including florists and small fruit growers. I never was 
at his home or your’s, though I took dinner once with the Goulds many 
years ago when we were all young and full of work. 
Since I last wrote you the pioneer florist of Minneapolis, Wm. Bucken- 
dorf, has passed away, as also Mr. Fleischer, late of St. Paul, but formerly 
of Minneapolis, if my memory is not at fault. 
I do not remember if there were sketches of the above in Horticulturist, 
although both were old settlers and prominent in our profession. 
Truman M. Smith and I are about as we have been for some time. He 
comes into town with fruit nearly every weekday, while I am pushing seeds, 
bulbs, cacti, mostly for the East and Europe in a wholesale way. 
San Diego, Cal., Nov. 16, 1800. L. M. Ford. 
A PRIZE LOOKING TOWARD IMPROVEMENT OF HOME 
GROUNDS.—Can your society not offer a prize for the best survey of 
house grounds and the best plan of home’ grounds? You 
can undoubtedly take advantage of a little leaflet that I am preparing to 
give instructions for the preparation of simple surveys of home grounds by 
the owner or his boys and girls, on which all existing conditions may be 
indicated. It is in my opinion absolutely necessary that one should know 
the existing conditions before he can pass intelligently upon any plan for 
the re-arrangement of grounds. .A plan on paper means almost nothing 
without a knowledge of such conditions. This leaflet that I am preparing 
is to be used by citizens of Menomonie, Wis., and Ishpeming, Mich., and 
by my representatives there, to secure just such conditions on every place in 
the town, in order that I may make suggestions for improvements on each 
place. These suggestions will not involve any considerable expenditure of 
time or labor, for it must be recognized that the majority of lot owners can- 
not make such expenditure. If every one does a little, however, each year to- 
ward such improvement, it wil! raise the standard of the town immensely. 
Boston, Mass., Dec. 2, 1809. Warren H. Manning. 
