150 ANNUAL REPORT 



cut. preparatory to budding, leaving the leaf stock about half an 

 inch long, and leaving the bud nicely protected for winter. The 

 fruit of the Autumn Streaked is nearly if not quite as large as 

 Duchess, a little better in quality, and keeps some two or three 

 weeks longer. 



The Eussian apple has no truer friend than myself, but please 

 bear in mind that our best friends sometimes indulge in a little 

 friendly criticism, and it is well known to some of you at least, 

 that we have frequently tried to check some of our most enthusi- 

 astic admirers of the Eussian apple against hoping for too many 

 long keepers from Northern or Central Eussia, and we have 

 harped so much on this point, perhaps we had better indulge in 

 a little theory in regard to why these things are so. Charles 

 Gibb — and there is perhaps no better authority — says that at 

 St. Petersburg they have "a cool, short summer." Others 

 claim — and no doubt truthfully — that in Central Eussia the 

 climate is similar to our own: but all will admit that the sum- 

 mer is shorter; and hot weather, or at least excessively hot 

 weather, is shut off there soon after the fruits, such as the Anis 

 and Antonovka, for instance, are ripe; while here the heat is 

 kept up perhaps two or three weeks longer, or until fermenta- 

 tion sets in, and then the fruit soon decays. Nature had fitted 

 them for a shorter summer than ours. We believe this answers 

 the question why a winter apple in Eussia is a fall fruit in Min- 

 nesota. And this leads us to advise every fruit grower who 

 possibly can do so, to build an ice house this winter and fill it, 

 and just before these Eussians are fairly ripe to pick them, pack 

 carefully and put them in cold storage; in this way we can put 

 ourselves in shape to make the finest display of fruits one year 

 from to-day that was ever made at a winter meeting in the 

 Northwest. We found the Eussian apples at Charles Lued- 

 loff's and at A. Peterson's, in Carver County, looking just 

 splendid. 



Prof. Budd and Chas. Gibb have done signal service to the 

 Northwest by calling special attention to the important fact 

 that we must make a specialty of varieties with thick, pubes- 

 cent leaves; and while visiting our experimental station in 

 Carver County we had this in view. We found the Autumn 

 Streaked here with a leaf not surpassed, if equaled; we will 

 qualify this a little by saying that this was the way it appeared 

 to us (by the naked eye) but possibly the aid of a good micro- 

 scope might cause us to give the preference to some other variety. 



