STATE HORTICULTUBAL SOCIETY. 329 



the northeast and up to the high land north of Lu Verne, is of some- 

 what diflFerent formation and climate. It is in fact influenced more 

 by the Missouri than the Mississippi valley. The Ben Davis stood 

 very well in 1884-5 at Sioux Falls, right at the west end of this dis- 

 trict. 



I am led to this view of the matter also by the further fact of so 

 many old seedlings standing so well all through this region, while in 

 the counties northeast, such as Rice, Le Sueur, Scott and others, the 

 seedlings were nearly all killed in 1872, and the remainder, with but 

 one exception, completely annihilated in 1884-85; the one exception 

 being the orchard in which the Peerless stands. That southwest por- 

 tion of the State, together with the river portions above mentioned, 

 not included in the first district, we can call district No. 2, and rea- 

 sonably expect it to produce apples that cannot be grown in the larger 

 portion of the State. 



Over the rest of the State south of the forty-fifth parallel, and in 

 some localities above that, the Duchess, or anything equally hardy, 

 can be grown with great success by any one who will inform himself 

 how to plant and care for trees, and then give them the same business- 

 like care and attention that insures success in any honorable pursuit 

 in life. 



IN RICE COUNTY. 



In the fall of 1855 Franklin Kelly brought with him a lot of apple 

 seeds from New Hampshire and planted them on new land that fall. 

 They began to bear in 1863 and bore well ten years, bearing a single 

 season 150 bushels. The total crop in the ten years was 800 bushels; 

 it was on a southern slope on the prairie near the city of Northfield. 

 No grafted varieties except the Duchess have done as well under sim- 

 ilar conditions, and it killed out in 1872-3. The seeds came from a 

 section where they raised nearly the same list they did in Maine; such 

 as Early Harvest, Grauenstein, Astrachan, William's Favorite, Spitz- 

 enberg, Baldwin, etc. From such ancestry we could hardly have ex- 

 pected more. 



In our locality are to be found good Duchess trees that have stood 

 twenty-five years and are still very productive. We have seven trees 

 of Duchess set in spring of 1867. I believe they are good for twenty 

 years more. They stood so close together they could not bear well. 

 :J cut out a number of them last spring. We never lose any Duchess, 

 although we have lost nearly all the Wealthy and hundreds of trees of 



