GENERAL FRUITS. 115 



Mr. L. H. Wilcox: If that last page is so encouraging to 

 apple growing and fruit growing I think we had better accept 

 it as an offset to the pessimistic views Mr. Dartt has set forth 

 in former years. 



Mr. J. S. Harris: The paper read before us is an evidence 

 that we live in a progressive age. Mr. Dartt is becoming con- 

 verted to apple culture, and if he attends a few more meetings 

 of the society, he will come out and say there is money in small 

 fruit culture for every farmer. All of us men that have been 

 through the mill and have had from twenty to forty years 

 experience in Minnesota, believe it. We believe every farmer 

 can grow his small fruits, but we hesitate a good deal when we 

 advise them to put out an orchard, because we are not fully 

 satisfied there are more than two or three varieties that will 

 stand everything, Let us go on until we get Brother Dartt 

 fully converted. 



Mr. Dartt: I want to state, Mr. President, that there are 

 evidences of this being a progressive age. Now, the fact that 

 one individual is progressive is not evidence of the age; we 

 have got to have the whole mass educated to a standard in 

 order to call an age progressive. In this case I am happy to 

 see indications of the fact that those members have progressed 

 so much that they are able to appreciate my valuable instruc- 

 tion, but they have become educated up to it. (Laughter.) 



Mr. Pearce: I say he has done more than any one man in 

 the state in demonstrating that Minnesota is a good state for 

 raising apples. He took from his orchard just 1,900 bushels 

 of nice standard apples, and I said to myself, there is a future 

 for apples in Minnesota. 



Col. Stevens: Mr. Keel had 8,500 bushels; Mr. Dartt, 2,000; 

 Mr. Somerville, 2,000 and Mr. Michenor about 2,500, so at least 

 four farmers raised a good many apples in Minnesota, about 

 10,000 bushels. 



Rabbits — I reported some years ag'o my success in preventing- 

 their depredations in the orchard by throwing- down a few elm 

 branches where they could eat the buds. This past winter a little pile 

 of wheat, kept out on a knoll for quails, has been the nightly resort 

 of the rabbits, and they have not barked a tree in the orchard. The}'' 

 herded so thickly in the cover near by that my neighbor's boys have 

 shot eighteen there during the winter and sent them to the city 

 markets. Oliver Gibbs, Jr. 



