APPLE GROWING IN THE RED RIVER VALLEY. 433 
west—I mean a few feet to the mile, and from north to south a few 
inches. The altitude at the station is something like 875 feet above 
sea level. 
Mr. Wheaton: I want to ask the altitude of the Red River 
Valley above the river? = 
Prof. Hoverstad: The land is almost perfectly level. I could 
not tell you what the altitude is, but it is very little above the river. 
The President: The difference is very little. A man told me 
he went one hundred and fifty miles in a freshet right over the land 
in a boat. . 
Prof. Green: I would like to have you tell us how wet it is. 
It. seems to me it would be well to have those points brought out. 
Mr. Wheaton: I had a little experience in that country twenty- 
seven years ago running alevel. The land near Crookston is about 
forty feet above the Red Lake river and that is slightly above the 
Red River, so I think there is a drainage of about forty feet from 
Crookston. 
Mr, Clark: Some five or six years ago I was at Fisher, that is 
twelve miles from Crookston, and a groceryman at that place had 
some very fine Transcendent crab apples; said he had bought them 
of a man living in that vicinity, and that he had brought in about 
twenty bushels. I would like to know whether Prof. Hoverstadt 
has ever heard anything about those trees? 
Prof. Hoverstadt: I do not know of any trees raised in that 
part of the country. I have been told that some men are very suc- 
cessful, but when you get at the truth of the story you find their 
efforts are practically a failure. I have been told that there are 
Transcendent trees in that part of the state that are successful, but 
I have never been able to see any. About the fall of the land from 
Red Lake River to the Red River, I hardly think that can be so. 
The banks of the river are very much higher than the land either 
way, so that instead of having drainage from the country into the 
river we have the drainage from the river into the country. Be- 
ing situated as we are only two miles from the river I had some 
experience with drainage. The land north of us is a little higher 
than the experiment farm, and there is a rise of five or six feet from 
the experiment farm to the river, so that if we want to drain we have 
to cut through the ridge, and we have to go quite a good deal 
deeper when we get to the river. The land north and east, about 
twenty sections, used to be under water, and that water ran right 
across the experiment farm, and old farmers told me that in former 
years they could have run a steamboat right across the present loca- 
tion of the farm. In the spring of ’97 the whole farm was under 
