50 ANNUAL REPORT. 
Small Fruits. 
s - wi ite 
We: find the huckleberry or blueberry all the way from Georgia to Minnesota, ee 
and our wild creeping or trailing blackberry is known in the southern states as 
the dewberry, and has there the same general characteristics as here. 
The cranberry is not profitably grown south of the Ohio river, and ‘tis to a 
strange exception to the general rule. But to offset this advantage we cannot 
grow oranges, lemons, peaches, quinces, apricots, pawpaws, persimmons or mul- 
berries. 
That queen of small fruits, the strawberry, will do well under good culture 
wherever Indian corn will ripen. Just as good crops can be produced in Minne - 
sota as in southern Illinois, and the same is true of our hardier Raspberries. 
It is a remarkable ruling of nature’s laws, that while we have hardly a tree or 
' shrub but seems benefitted, by removal to a more southern climate, they have — 
thousands that will not endure one vlast ot our northern winter. It seems as 
though much of the grand and the beautiful gave place to the strictly usefal in 
our northern home. 
Instead of the live oak with its wide, spreading arms, festooned with the gray 
beard of the forest, the wierd sycamore, with glamorous leaf and white trunk, the 
beautiful cypress, the lordly tulip tree, we have the pine, the oak, the maple, the 
ash ancl the elm, and our southern brethren have these also. 
The magnolia gaudiflora, the most beautiful fowering tree in the world—the 
queen of them all—we dare not even imagine it might grow here. 
Flowers. 
Many of our familiar annual flneons or such as are compelled to be annuals, if 
grown out of doors, become perrennials in the south. The Antirrhinum and 
Dianthus will bloom until exhausted, in Florida, and our house ivies grow in 
luxuriant profusion over walls and gables in Tennesse. 
Cereals and Vegetables. 
The cereals and vegetables bear important testimony in way of illustration. 
These latter are not so marked in habit of growth as in time required to arrive at 
maturity. 
They accommodate themselves wonderfully to circumstances, requiring a long 
or short season to arrive at maturity according to the location. 
Earliness and Climate. 
It has long been a theory that the further north the seeds are grown the sooner 
the product will come to maturity. 
It is an established fact that cereals attain the highest degree of perfection 
near tlte northern limit of their growth, and the same is true of vegetable seeds. 
This perfection of quality is of no use to the planter, unless some of the valu- 
able characteristics follow the seed to the product. 
If the earliness of a grain or vegetable im its northern home is carried to any 
marked degree to the product when planted south, a very important considera- 
tion is attained, and our theory can be made to represent something practical 
and profitable in agriculture and horticulture. 
