HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 245 



bred back into a long-necked mongrel, and was discarded. An- 

 other cross between Miller's Cream Nutmeg and Bird Cantaloupe 

 also bred back to both sides with the virtues of neither parents 

 and faults that neither had. I am now bred entirely out of a 

 good muskmelon. What shall I try next? Someone tell me. 



The William Hurst pea, seed originally from Gregory, is all 

 we want for an early sort. With my other purchased seeds I 

 received a lot ordered for and labeled "Champion of England." 

 They were not champion of anything whatever. Does any 

 seedsman preserve this old king of the late peas ? I have not 

 been able to get it for many years. 



SMALL FRUITS. • 



I have found, as yet, no strawberry quite suited to this soil and 

 climate except the Crescent, though Glendale does fairly well; 

 shall discard Sharpless, Jewell, Parry and Warren, have or- 

 dered Wilson, Gaudy, Jessie, Bubach, and Monmouth. Lucre- 

 tia Dewberry wintered well but bore no fruit, probably uncov- 

 ered too early. Grapes, the few found in the garden when I 

 came here, bore well and ripened before the frost of September 

 10th. My first planting of grapes was last spring. Out of sixty- 

 five vines, partly from Mr. Latham and the rest from the Min- 

 nesota Experimental Farm, all lived and grew well but three. In 

 the lot are Moore's Early, Worden, Concord, Delaware, Niagara, 

 Pocklington, Brighton, Janesville, Wilder, Agawam, Ives, Hart- 

 ford, and Rogers 9. Will watch their foliage and general habits 

 carefully and report. We have a great study here in Dakota to 

 find out what sorts of plants are adapted to our climate. My 

 place is too much the headquarters for birds to do anything with 

 raspberries till this fruit becomes more common in farmers' gar- 

 dens. 



FLOWERS. 



In the flower garden we have good success, and it goes a long 

 way to make us contented in Dakota. In the centre of the plat, 

 a little bench garden devoted exclusively to flowers, we have a 

 wild grape trained over a cheap arbor of poles and crotches, 

 under which a dozen persons can be comfortably seated, and the 

 foliage so dense over head that the brown thrushes often chirrup 

 and eat their grapes there while we are sitting beneath, and it 

 is but three years since we put the arbor up. The young shoots 

 hang pendant on the sides, and some of them are taking fresh 



