STATE HORTICULTDBAL SOCIETY. 45 



Say to Mr. Harris, when you meet him, that I appreciate and thank 

 him for the motion to make me an honorary life member. 



You askf d me once to furnish my photograph for the picture gallery. 

 1 have no spare copy suitable, and it is uncertain when, if ever, I may 

 get out where a new one could be taken. Meantime, I wish you would 

 look into the State Fair buildings for a large photograph I left there 

 in September, 1885, in frame, showing a group of the tState and Terri- 

 torial commissioners at the World's Exposition in New Orleans. If 

 it is still there, ask Secretary Hoard to let you have it In the group 

 my friends will recognize what was left of me after my Washington 

 illness. It is the best I can do for you at present. Let me know if 

 you find it. I left it hanging on a panel of the fish exhibit, It was 

 designed as a present to Gov. Hubbard, and I asked him to send for it, 

 after the fair of that year was over, but I presume he never thought 

 of it afterwards. 



Why is Andrew Peterson left out of the list of life members? 

 He was elected on my motion at the same time with Charles Lued- 

 lofP. It is one of my pleasant memories that I discovered these 

 two grand old men out there in Carver county and brought them 

 and their works before the Society, and enlisted them for life as 

 active members. It strengthens my courage in apple growing to 

 know that Mr. Peterson's surviving Russian trees — strays from 

 the East plain, sifted out of the Washington inportatiou, as 

 Prof. Budd called them — have continued ever since, the same 

 hardy look as when they greeted my prophetic soul in August, 

 1883, when I found them, searching as I was, not alone for apples to 

 get the medal with at Philadelphia, but for things new and improving, 

 for the Horticultural Society. It was the first time I had ever seen a 

 fair test of the Russian trees — all else had been top-worked on crabs; 

 and the first time, also, that I had seen an apple tree in Minnesota 

 that said plainly in every expression of leaf and wood that it had 

 come to stay. These trees must now be from twelve to fourteen years 

 old — no test for a single seedling, having its own top root under it, 

 but for a group of root grafted trees, a pretty good one. If, as Prof. 

 Budd avers, others of the East plain Russians, having equal adapta- 

 tion to our Northwestern climate, are in addition good in quality for 

 eating out of hand, we are nearer success in orcharding than by the 

 seedling route; though to one traveling either from the Russian start- 

 ing point or any other starting point, " happy may be his dole," I say. 



As to my own Russian trees — apple, pear, cherry and plum — planted 

 last year, about one hundred and twenty-five in number as before re- 



