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THE MINNESOTA 
HORTICULTURIST. 
WOU:.'26. 0. APRIL, 1868. No. 4. 
PLUMS. 
(AN ADDRESS) 
PROF. E. S. GOFF, MADISON, WIS. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It gives me much pleas- 
ure to meet with you at this time. Ihavelong hada desire to attend 
your winter meeting, but it happens that our Short Course in Agri- 
culture is in session at this time, and we have felt that we must at- 
tend to our home duties first, so it is not often that I get awayin the 
winter. My friends seemed anxious that I should come this time, 
so they sent me in spite of my work, for which I am very glad. 
I do not feel competent to sum up the plum question. It is true, 
Iam giving considerable attention to the plum at this time, but my 
experience has not extended over a long period. 
First, in regard to chickens in the plum yard as aremedy for cur- 
culio. I do not know whether Mr. Gibbs visited the New York Ex- 
periment Station at the time I was there or not. I was at the New 
York Station seven years, and during the first six of these years we 
kept chickens in and the seventh year we took them out of the plum 
yard. Those six yearswe hada goodcrop of plums. The year we took 
them out we did not have any. Whether or not the chickens ate the 
curculio,I do not know. The plumsthatwere not protected in that or- 
chard were a total failure. We grew only the European plum,and that 
plum is almost certain to be a total failure in New York unless the 
curculio is conquered. Our theory was that the chickens ate the 
curculios as they came out ofthe ground in the spring. I will con- 
fess I never caught a chicken eating them, but I do know we had 
plums. Possibly, they ate the larvae as they escaped from the fruit. 
Iam something of a young convert in regard to the native plums. 
I came west with the idea, which I think a great many eastern peo- 
ple have, that the native plums are not worth growing where we can 
grow anything else, and I planted our first Americana plums with 
thatidea. We also planted a few trees of the Green Gage, the Or- 
leans, Lombard and some other standard varieties of the east, and 
some Russian plums. The plums bore some fruit three years after 
planting. Last year we had a very fine crop of both Americana and 
European plums. The European plums were very fine, and I began 
to think that after all we might be able to grow the European plum 
