- , 5 
MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 97 
Horticultural Society, and wishing to cast in my mite for so 
good an occasion, I venture to send a little of my experience, 
to be disposed of as may be seen fit. 
In the year 1865, my first year in Minnesota, we bought 
$100 worth of apple trees from a nursery in Rochester, N. Y., 
twenty of which trees were dwarfs. The balance of several 
‘varieties, called hardy, were healed in in the fall of 1865. In 
the spring of 1866 we set» them out in rich black soil, with a 
slight mixture of sand. This soil was too feet deep, with a 
subsoil of yellow clay. This land would be called low or 
bottom land, sloping to the south. About one-half of the 
dwarfs died that summer, and in the fall of 1867 there were but 
three of them alive, and they in a sickly condition. The 
other trees, when bought, were from four to six feet in height 
The winters of 1867 and 1868 were severe on them, and the 
mice, too, wished to help along the matter of destruction, as 
they had girdled thirty. ‘The summer of 1868 showed that 
they were struck with death. The pocket gophers, not wish- 
ing to slight me showed what they could do, as they had cut 
off a great number of the large roots of the live trees, and in 
1870, there was not one left out of the entire number. 
Not wishing to give up the undertaking, I concluded to try 
another plan, and in the fall of 1871 I planted some seeds 
from the Snow and Maiden Blush apples, grown in this lati- 
tude in Wisconsin. These seeds were planted on sloping 
ground, on the north side of a few rows of cottonwoods four 
years old, the first row being six feet from the cottonwoods, 
the others four feet each’ from this, all the rows running east 
and west. In the fall I counted 200 trees. As the winter of 
1872-3 was so severe I did not expect any of them would sur- 
vive it, as [had cultivated them pretty thoroughly. In digging 
‘them up this last fall I found but thirty of the two hundred 
had died. , 
I should think there were about six varieties, some quite 
wild-like, being thorny and smal], while others had but few 
limbs, a dark glossy bark, and were three feet in height ; 
others again were of a yellowish-green bark, two and a half 
feet tall. These had to be watched with care during the latter 
part of summer to prevent their being destroyed by a worm 
from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in length, and in 
color resembling the bark and the green leaf of a tree, on 
which it would feed until every leaf was devoured. 
Perhaps you may wish to know my plan for setting out 
some more in the spring. I intend to dig out the holes for 
them three feet in diameter, two feet in depth, and twelve by 
sixteen feet apart, on an eastern slope of black loam. These 
holes I shall line and partially fill with the refuse stone and 
