302 ANNUAL REPORT 



2 to 3 o'clock. The Drake is of about the hardiness of Haas, as a 

 root graft. Fruit from this tree was shown at the last winter 

 meeting. Owing to heavy freezing nights after apples set, there 

 was no fruit here last summer. 



PEERLESS. 



We have several thousand of this variety top worked on Whit- 

 ney No. 20, Transcendent, Duchess, Early Strawberry, Header's 

 Winter, and a number of other kinds of crabs. As a root graft it 

 seems to root well from the scion, and it apparently so rules the 

 stock as to impart hardiness to it — more so than most other varie- 

 ties. Last winter there was little or no snow to speak of, and there 

 was a great deal of root killing among my yearling trees by the 

 side of the Peerless. The Peerless, with but one exception, had 

 been cut to within three or four inches of the ground, they being 

 needed for scions. There was no root killing among them, but 

 Whitney, Early Strawberry and Berry Crab were nearly all killed, 

 and Transcend ant, in the very next row, were partly killed. All 

 were on the same kind of stocks. On the other side of the Peer- 

 less were Briar's Sweet Crab and Richland Beauty, one of the six 

 old seedlings of Duchess, grown by Mr. J. G. Miller. There was 

 no root killing among them, and on digging them last fall I found 

 the Richland Beauty had rooted from the scion better than any- 

 thing I had ever seen. This variety seems to be nearly a straight 

 reproduction of the Duchess — fruit a little smaller, stem longer, 

 and a few days later in ripening. There is in the old tree a more 

 well defined tendency to blight than in the parent Duchess, which 

 I take to be a pathological sequence of in and in breeding. This 

 point in development is strongly shown by the Peerless, which 

 being a cross between Talman Sweet and Duchess— the best rep- 

 resentatives of two different types or families, shows no tendency 

 whatever to blight. The Faribault, now two years old, makes one 

 of the best of nursery trees. The original tree in supposed to be a 

 seedling of Little Romanite, about twenty years old. Young trees 

 grafted from it have been in bearing several years and are very 

 productive. The old tree is on the school grounds of the Episco- 

 palians here. The fruit keeps well all winter. 



The past summer was the dryest ever known here and the Aphis 

 the worst ever known. Evergreens were injured by the late frosts 

 in May and did not make as good a growth as usual. The Sim- 

 mons crab was the only tree except plums that bore a crop here 

 last year. It is the earliest crab known — small, yellow, but very 

 good. 



Of plums the Berry was the most profitable last year. 



RUSSIAN APPLES. 



Of the three remaining varieties left from 65 varieties set in the 

 spring of 1873, together with three from the planting of 1874, and 

 100 trees set in the spring of 1883, all have maintained their well 

 merited reputation for general worthlessness in our climate. 



YOUNG SEEDLINGS. 



I have now set out in orchard rows about 30 seedlings from 



