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BOXING APPLE TREES. 171 
dition for vigorous growth in the spring. While this method of treatment is 
not perhaps best where apple§ are raised in favorable locations on a small 
scale, yet for the home orchard, and especially for the orchard in severe 
locations, I consider it very desirable. It should be better understood by 
our people that a dozen trees well cared for will produce far more satisfac- 
tory results than fifty trees that are neglected. 
GROWING APPLE SEEDLINGS. 
H. GUERDSEN, VICTORIA. 
The raising of seedling apples seems to me to be of great importance to 
all who desire to raise apples in this state and are not already supplied with 
the best and hardiest varieties, that can so easily and cheaply be obtained 
from any reliable nursery, or do not have the means to purchase them. 
Plant apple seeds from apples that are grown in this state. It was in the 
year 1866, when the crabs and Duchess were first introduced here, that I 
bought several varieties. They grew very well, and in two or three years we 
rejoiced to have some apples on our table of our own raising. As those 
trees were doing well, I thought the cheapest way to raise some more trees 
would be to plant seeds from those apples raised here. I planted the seed in 
the fall of the year, and it came up in the spring, doing well. I transplanted 
them when large enough, except one tree, which was left standing in the 
row. That tree is now bearing annually a good crop of apples of the Trans- 
cendent variety and has never blighted. Some of those trees came in bear- 
ing quite early and are good eating apples, some were worthless, and in that 
dry season many were root-killed. When the Russian apples were intro- 
duced and seemed to be very valuable, I requested the late Mr. And. Peter- 
son to graft some of my seedlings, as he raised those Russian apples. 
When the hard winters of ’84 and ’85 came, nearly all my trees were 
killed, except some seedlings and the Russians. I grubbed out the dead trees, 
and replanted them with some seedlings and hardy root-grafted trees, from 
which we now obtain a fair supply of good eating apples. In those dry sea- 
sons I found that seed planted in the fall would not sprout, so I saved the 
seed of apples in the winter and soaked it for two days in warm water; then 
planted it early in the spring, and it came up nicely. Had it not been for 
those seedling trees we should have been again without apples, after those 
hard winters. My land is clay subsoil. I mulch all my trees. 
My advice is to plant apple seeds. 
TOP-GRAFTING THE AMERICAN PLUM. 
PROF. E. S. GOFF, STATE EXPERIMENT STATION, MADISON, WIS. 
For several seasons past I have done more or less top-working on the 
Americana plum, and while I have not yet learned to succeed in every trial, 
I have found out some of the conditions that have always failed. 
1st. Cions of which the buds are the least swollen or calloused have 
invariably failed, no matter how carefully they have been worked. It does 
not seem to matter whether the swelling has occurred on fall-cut cions, 
or before the cions are cut in the spring. The failure has been equal in both 
cases. 
2d. Slender cions have always failed. Cions have often been sent to me 
as slender as the ordinary fence wire and sometimes even more slender. 
