HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 215 



October 9th, I visited Mr. H. S. Hayes, one of the pio- 

 neers of Fillmore county, and a distant relative of ex-Presi- 

 dent Hayes. He has a fine stock farm and the finest herd 

 of red polled cattle I ever saw. You can find his name in the 

 herd book. One reason why his stock always looks so fat and 

 contented is because they have a large fine native grove to range 

 in, in which flows a fine babbling brook of pure spring water. 

 His stock yards and buildings are also well protected by native 

 trees, and others of his own planting. October 10th Mr. Hayes 

 accompanied me to the little village of Washington, on brook 

 Kidron, near where we found the little clump of native white 

 spruce in 1859, of which we made mention in our last year's re- 

 port. The owner of these trees claimed that one of them was 

 one hundred feet high when we visited there about a year ago, 

 and Mr. Hayes and myself went there this time prepared to 

 measure them, but the owner had stolen the march on us and had 

 -cut them down, and used them for the frame work of a new 

 building that he had recently erected. But as we started out to 

 measure a tree, we concluded to look further, and as we both 

 knew where the first tree was that left that wild clump on the 

 Kidron thirty-four years ago, we left for that place. The farm 

 is now owned by Albert Lyon of Eochester, and the tree measures 

 fifty-one feet and seven inches high and six and one-half feet in 

 circumference one foot above the surface; four feet ai)ove the 

 surface it measures five and one-half feet. 



This is perhaps the most beautiful specimen of the white 

 spruce that I ever saw. Foliage of a deep blue, and all the 

 branches on the main limbs droop as gracefully as upon the fin- 

 est specimens of the weeping ISTorways. Mr. Hayes gave me an 

 introduction to Henry P. Moon, a prominent small fruit grower 

 of his neighborhood — Sumner township. Mr. Moon is making 

 a success with the blackberry, raspberry and strawberry; and 

 he tells us that he also made a success with his apple orchard in 

 Winona county before he moved to Fillmore county. Mr. Hayes 

 showed us a Transcendent crab tree eighteen inches in diameter 

 and some thirty years old that has yielded twenty bushels in a 

 single year. The Beech's Sweet is fine here, and Mr. Hayes says 

 it comes in nice and handy in making that old fashioned New 

 England dish that he is so fond of, viz., sweet apple pudding. 



October 11th, visited D. K. Michenor, Forestville, who has 

 twelve acres in orchard, and one of the best in the state. He 

 lias some fifteen or twenty varieties, but Duchess and Wealthy 



