SECRETARY'S CORNER. : 359 
horticultural building and talking with the fruit growers who make 
a veritable hive of it during fair week. You will have the oppor- 
tunity of the year to get practical information on fruit topics, and 
if you show any fruit be surprised at the premiums you will get— 
at least this latter is the experience of most new exhibitors. 
THE PROBLEM OF RUSSIAN APPLE NOMENCLATURE.—AsS we go to 
press (August 30th) a joint committee from the three states of 
Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, is in session at La Crosse (the 
annual fair being on there) wrestling with this bewildering prob- 
lem. This meeting was originally the suggestion of Mr. Clarence 
Wedge, who is chairman of the committee representing our own 
state, accompanied by Prof.S. B. Green avd Mr. J.S. Harris. The 
appointees from the other two states are equally representative, 
Wisconsin sending Prof. E. S. Goff and Messrs. A. J. Philips and A. 
G. Tuttle and Iowa Messrs. C. G. Patten, Jerry Sexton and J. B. 
Mitchell. Prof. Hansen will also be there as representative of South 
Dakota. This is a notable gathering, and its members are too 
well known to the horticulturists of the northwest to need any 
description. It is believed that something may be accomplished at 
this meeting to disentangle the almost hopeless maze into which 
the nomenclature of the Russian varieties of apples cultivated in 
this section has fallen, as a result of the mixture of names accom- 
plished somewhere en route between their native habitat in north- 
western Europe and here. Specimens of fruit, leaves, wood, twigs, 
etc., will be used for purposes of comparison, and the words of 
knowledge of others on this subject zealously studied in search for 
the needed light. It is expected that each section of this joint 
committee will make a separate report to its own state society. 
They will be looked for with great interest. 
DARTT AND HIS OWATONNA EXPERIMENT TREE STATION.—The 
writer had the pleasure ofa flying visit on Tuesday, August 23rd, 
with Mr. E. H. S. Dartt, at his place in Owatonna. The primary 
purpose was to “look over” the experiment station, which he is 
conducting on the grounds of the state school located there, but 
incidentally many other things were seen and enjoyed in common 
with Messrs. Wyman Elliot, Clarence Wedge, J. S. Harris and J. P. 
Andrews, other members of the executive board of the horticultural 
society. It will be impossible in these notes to say much about the 
doings at the trial station or Mr. Dartt’s private orchards or the man 
himself who engineers these places. Mr. Dartt is, first, a horticul- 
turist, and second, a real estate boomer, and withala prohibitionist, 
and he combines the most radical qualifications of these three 
phases of his life in the quaint, unique and thorough way in which 
we have noted his personality at the annual meetings of our associ- 
ation. He evidently believes in doing very well what he does, and 
this method is sure to bring results, either in growing apples, 
testing and originating new varieties or shaping up and selling 
realestate. The things he believes in he does and evidently to the 
end. He believes in girdling, and his well kept orchards of 2,000 
bearing trees and experiment nursery of four or five acres testify to 
