VICE-PRESIDENTS' REPORTS. 319 



A summary of the fruit raising ill the sixth district dating^ in re- 

 ports to me, is that apples and crabs are yet on trial, that among 

 small fruits the currants and sand cherry leads, ^gooseberries next, 

 raspberries next, blackberries next. The most delicious of them all, 

 the strawberrj', has to take the rear for reliability. Tlie ill success in 

 raising this berry is, as a rule, from neglectto attend to its needs. In 

 the estimation of the average farmer, strawberries are too small fry 

 to stoop to; will do for women, etc. Yes, and women show better 

 sense, and are more patient with the precious little plants that do 

 indeed respond to tenderer hands. Everywhere with us the ques- 

 tion is asked. "Why do they not yield more?" Even when put in 

 rich soil, creditably cultivated, winter mulched, the crops are mea- 

 ger compared with those in the southern part of the state. As they 

 generally blossom profusely', the inference is that they are not well 

 polleuized. The winds are sometimes helpful but are more fre- 

 quently hindrances, for thej' blow the pollen from the beds. Nor 

 does the protection of trees bring the fruit we are entitled to. 



To a great extent I attribute our failures in profitable fruit raising 

 to a lack of bees and other honey-eating insects. We make poor 

 headway raising the clovers, because we have not the bees to fertilize 

 them, and we have a superabundance of field mice that destroy the 

 combs and nests of the bees, and we have not old maids enough to 

 raise cats enough to destroy the field mice, and we have so many 

 fool farmers who struggle to farm it on the prairie without forests 

 to break the winds, bees staj' away from us because we build no 

 tree homes for them to live in and get honey from. And so we plod 

 along with "wheat on the brain" and wild buffalo grass seed in the 

 hair, pocketless, because beeless, and beeless because treeless and 

 cloverles;^, and fruitless l)ecause faithless in diversified agriculture. 

 Success in fruit raising lies in restoring the interlinks in the life 

 chain of being, broken by deforestation and burning over the coun- 

 try we are trying to domesticate. Darwin well says: "So profound 

 is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that all marvel 

 when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do 

 not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world or in- 

 vent laws on the duration of the forms of life!" 



SEVENTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 

 MRS. JENNIE STAtiEK, \ K E-l'KESIDENT, .SAUK KAI'IDS. 



?[r. President, ladies and gentlemen:— The past season has been 

 the worst for small fruits we have had for years, owing to the hard 

 and succeS'sive frosts just when the fruits were blossoming. Straw- 

 berry plants were frozen out, raspberries killed down to the ground 

 and almost all other fruit hurt in a measure. Still I do not think 

 the damage would have been so great were it not for the drought 

 of the summer before, which must have weakened the plants. How- 

 ever, a failure now and then does not discourage us, as I find more 

 small fruit has been planted in our district this year than ever 

 before. 



