288 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



foot. I get a spreading- top. Go a little further out, and you get 

 a better top and just as good a union as you do close to the tree. 



Mr. Jewett: I have noticed in many instances that the top- 

 worked tree makes a better growth than the same variety of tree 

 in the next row does on its own stem. There seems to be something 

 in the stock that gives additional vigor to the growth of the tree. 



Mr. Philips : I have been doing this work a great many years, 

 and since I have used the Virginia I do not think there is a tree 

 in the orchard that has outgrown it. 



Prof. Hansen : Do you still stick to the Virginia as the best 

 of all? 



Mr. Philips: Yes, sir; I do. It is the best of all. I use the 

 Virginia because I think it is the best, and I use the Hibernal be- 

 cause I think it is the next best. I got some very good growth 

 last fall on the Hibernal. 



THE FARMER AND HORTICULTURE. 



C. H. TRUE, SECY. N. E. IA. HORT. SOCIETY, EDOEWOOD, IA. 



The farmer is the nurseryman's best customer. Doubtless the 

 farming communities appropriate ninety per cent of all the products 

 of our nurseries. Seventy-five per cent, at least, of this amount is 

 literally wasted. Take the patronage of the farmers of our land off 

 the list of customers, and our commercial nurseries could not long 

 survive. 



For this and other reasons the nurseryman should be especially 

 interested in the farmer's attempts to make a profitable use of the 

 trees and plants that have been placed in his care. When we take 

 into account the immense amount of trees and plants that are an- 

 nually dealt out to the farmers of our country by the commercial 

 nurseries of the northwest through their agents, and then as we 

 pass over and through our great states and note the absence of 

 orchards of any comparative value, while many farms are totally 

 destitute of what ought to be considered a necessity in the matter 

 of fruit supplies for the family, such conditions not only call forth 

 astonishment but also excite regret and pity in behalf of the planter 

 and his family in the loss sustained and in the disappointment aris- 

 ing out of misdirected effort, as well as from the results of wanton 

 negligence. 



The earnest solicitations of an agent for an order, from a farmer 

 customer, wherewith to replenish the losses sustained in a former 

 bill of stock, was met with this reply, "I have spent hundreds of 

 dollars since opening this farm for fruit trees and plants, and right 

 over yonder (pointing to a clump of scraggy, dead and dying trees 

 in one. corner of a hog lot) is all that I have left for my money and 



