BLIGHT, ETC. 403 



past thirty or forty years we have heard of hundreds of seedling 

 apples in the northwest, and people will beg-in to propagate them 

 and get up a boom on them only to find that they will not stand well. 

 Hundreds of seedlings have had a great popularity for a few years 

 and then passed out of sight, and I fear some of the seedlings we 

 heard about this forenoon will not be able to stand the test. There 

 must be something about the system of propagation that is at fault. 

 I am beginning to think there is something in Mr. Pearce's idea 

 that the cultivation is not the best. I am not prepared to say, be- 

 cause I have not experimented in that way enough. I am inclined 

 to think we can prevent the frequent root-killing in the nursery by 

 adopting the Russian method. Two years ago Dr. Shroeder, who 

 has been connected with Russian horticulture for the past fifty 

 years, told me that at the northern boundary of fruit culture they 

 have abandoned any attempt to work on the original seedling. 

 They do it in the southern part, at Kief, where they can bud an orig- 

 inal seedling, but at the northern limits of apple culture they find 

 they winter-kill too badly, so they have adopted another method, 

 and they have used it for a generation; they bud the seedlings of 

 the cherry crab, both the Pyrus baccata and the Pyrus prunifolia. 

 The doctor said the seedling was slightly dwarfed in habit, but 

 were fully two years earlier than the original apple seedlings. I 

 have had so far no opportunity to test it. They have not had enough 

 time to say what is in it. Within the next fifty years we will be 

 using the Russian method of budding and grafting on Russian 

 seedlings in the far north. 



Mr. Clarence Wedge: Professor, I would like to ask you if the 

 seedlings you refer to are the very small Siberian crab? 



Prof. Hansen: Yes, they use both of them; the Pyrus baccata and 

 the Pyrus prunifolia; they use both of them indiscriminately. 



Mr. Philips: Did the baccata dwarf the variety much? 



Prof. Hansen: Not more than the other. 



Mr. Wedge: Is the union perfect? 



Prof. Hansen: The union if perfect. 



Mr. Kellogg: I had twenty-six varieties grafted on that little 

 cherry crab, but the Hyslop was a failure on that little crab. 



Prof. Hansen: Were they top- worked? 



Mr. Kellogg: Yes, sir; they were top-worked. 



A Storage Cellar. — One of the experiment stations has been 

 trying a cellar designed for the storage of fruits and vegetables, 

 winter and sumiuer, constructed with a novel method of air supply. 

 A pipe six inches in diaineter is buried eight feet deep and covered 

 several hundred feet under ground and then brought to the surface 

 Through this long pipe the air supply of the cellar coines, and a 

 ventilating pipe of the same size comes out through the roof and 

 secure a free circulation. The air supply becomes warm in passing 

 through this long undergrovxnd pipe, which the earth keeps at its 

 own temperature, and the temperature of the cellar is thus uniform 

 both winter and summer. There is no reason why the same system 

 should not be applied to the side hill or other barns or to country 

 houses, reducing the cost of heating in winter and keeping them 

 cool in summer. — The Northwestern Farmer. 



