44. MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
petunias and tobacco. This work seems to fit especially well into _ 
the course in the School of Agriculture. 
Bulletins Issued. The Division of Horticulture has issued two 
bulletins during the past year, though they really belong to 1896. 
Bulletin No. 49, on the “Rate of Increase on the Cut-over Timber 
Lands of Minnesota,’ is a study of the conditions of our forest 
lands and the rate of increase on them. The work is merely prelim- 
inary, but it has taken up the subject at sufficient length to show 
that if the fires were kept out of the pine lands of this state the 
growth on them would soon renew itself. Bulletin No. 52, on “ Vari- 
ety Tests of Potatoes in 1896 and Potato Implements,” contains 
many illustrations and descriptions of special potato machinery. 
Increase in Equipment. Several hundred photographs have been 
taken in the Division of Horticulture during the past year, and the 
collection now numbers about seven hundred. The division now 
has about five hundred lantern slides for use in connection with 
lectures on horticulture. 
A new system card index for all our orchards and fruit plantations 
has been started, for, owing to confusion in the nomenclature of our 
newer varieties of fruits, including those of Russisn origin, it was 
found unsatisfactory to depend entirely upon the name of the fruit 
under which it was received. In the orchard one number is given 
to each tree-place, and in the index one numbered card for each tree. 
In this way it is an easy matter to keep a description of each tree 
on acard by itself. This I regard as a great improvement on our 
former system of keeping records. All fruits of the state are also 
being catalogued on the card index plan, and it is my intention toso | 
arrange them that the variety can be readily detected by its season 
and color. 
Mr. J. S. Harris has kindly donated to the Division of Horticulture 
a set of fifteen volumes of the Rural New Yorker, which have been 
bound and placed in the division. A new wagon, set of bobsleds 
and street watering cart have also been added to the eqipment. 
The season of 1897 was here characterized by plenty of rain, so 
that only once or twice during the entire season was it necessary to 
use our irrigating plant, and our crops were generally very good. 
The late spring frosts which did so much damage in other parts of 
the state did not hurt us very much, although our strawberries 
would probably have been injured by them had we not covered 
them with mulch from between the rows on the nights when the 
frests occurred. 
The trees in what has been known as the Russian orchard and in 
the new orchard are doing well. About seventy varieties of apples 
have been fruited during the past season, and considering the fact 
that our location and soil are poorly adapted to the growing of ap- 
ples the results have been very satisfactory. All varieties of plums 
produced very heavily,so much so that we picked off more than 
half the fruit on the Desota soon after it set. The new varieties of 
plums of special interest which have fruited the past year are the 
Aitkin, Manitoba No.1 and Surprise. 
