408 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
then they should be benefited, and the benefits in both cases will be in pro- 
portion to the number who visit those orchards or who read and heed the 
reports of the work being done and the results being reached in them. 
Now for a trial orchard to be beneficial, several things must be ob-. 
served. First, the work of making trials must be done for a specified pur- 
pose and by a person competent to do the work. Second, a competent per- 
son should be in charge to explain the work to those who come to make 
inquiries, and as this number is necessarily small there should be regular de- 
tailed reports made several times in each year. This gives our experiment 
stations and the Minnesota tree station an advantage, as a competent per- 
son is always on hand to give information at those places. 
The reports I have mentioned should be published in a paper in the state 
having a wide circulation among farmers. Even then but few will ever know 
much about them. One would think when looking over Prof. Goff’s class 
in horticulture in the winter that the young men interested in horticulture 
and trial orchards are plenty, but such is not the case. They are scattered 
over too wide an area, and many of them make a specialty of some other 
branch. 
As a rule, horticulturists do not visit trial orchards, both public and pri- 
vate, enough. We know too little what other public benefactors are doing. 
I was impressed forcibly with this when looking over the late S. I. Free- 
born’s and Peter M. Gideon’s work after they had departed. Many valuable 
trials and much valuable work for improvement in horticulture stopped right 
there for want of a person familiar with it to carry it on. 
No one can form an idea of the vast amount of valuable work that Mr. 
C. G. Patten, of Iowa, is doing, unless they visit and inspect his premises. 
There is no cessation in this work of trial orchards; it is continuous. There 
are so many changes in soil and climate. 
After so many years of painstaking work that Uncle Dartt has done for 
his state, I asked him last fall if he had produced anything that for an all 
around apple and tree was ahead of the Wealthy. He could not name one, 
I asked for the most promising new apple and tree. He said Phoenix No. 
50, named for our veteran who has given his life in the labor of trial or- 
chards. This, of course, aroused my curiosity, and I secured cions for a trial 
at home, and, as is unusual, I made one hundred root grafts besides top- 
working it some. Though he pronounced it good, I must give it a trial on 
my grounds, and it should be tried at Wausau. 
I find one of the main features of trial orchards accomplishing their in- 
tended missions is the fact that tree planters do not put themselves in touch 
with them and try to learn what to plant, but give their order to the first 
smooth-tongued agent that calls on them, and then say you can not grow ap- 
ples here. It makes one discouraged. Last fall I heard of a man five miles 
from my trial orchard who was going to plant 500 trees. I called on him 
and found him elated over some very fine Northwestern Greenings and Wis- 
consin Russett apples he had in his cellar. They were beautiful in February. 
I told him something about varieties and also told him that Wisconsin Rus- 
sett trees were scarce, as they had not been propagated much. I gave him 
the name of one man who I thought’ could furnish them. But he paid little 
attention to the varieties I had found profitable, but before spring bought 
from an agent of a southern nursery his quota of trees at fifteen dollars per 
ltundred, and the man who helped set them said he was satisfied from their 
