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MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCTETV, 



could carry, and they have immense tops. "The proof of the pudding 

 is in the eating." 



In the fall of 1894 I sampled some very nice plums at St. 

 Anthony Park and in 1900 looked them over again and found that 

 they had run out — were not larger than pistol bullets and, as Mr. 

 Mackintosh said, utterly worthless. Trees of the same variety at 

 Winnebago that grew in grass bore just as fine plums as they did 



1. Coffee Nut Tree. 2. Cut Leaf Birch-set in 1890. 



Trees growing on Mr. Richardson's Lawn. 



when younger. The worthless plums had had the best of care and 

 cultivation, the good plums not any. 



You take a piece of ground that is not on the dead level and 

 give it the best of surface cultivation, and get, as we did a few years 

 ago at Winnebago, sixteen inches of rainfall, government measure, 

 in four weeks, and much of the water runs off. Take ground that 

 has been covered with a heavy growth of grass and some weeds for 

 several vears and saved all the leaves that fell from the trees on the 



