"The Plums, No. 20, received from the station two years bore about 

 fifteen plums this year, and will say that I think them better for eating 

 than the Opata and a really fine looking plum. Purple skin and a dark red 

 meat, fine and sweet." — M. L. Gibbs, Echo, Minn. 



If You Send Check in payment of annual fee in the society add to it 

 a sufficient amount to cover the cost of collection, and take early oppor- 

 tunity to tell your banker what you think of this change in the time-honored 

 method of doing business which involves so much expense and annoyance. 

 You better send a dollar bill anyway. It will come through all right. 



Give Them Water. — "Tell them to give all trees and shrubs enougb 

 of a drink in the fall after the leaves are down to last them all winter and 

 keep on telling them until they believe it — and then we'll have less trees 

 freeze dry over winter. This a good fruit country, because it rains in the 

 fall. The middle state are too dry in the fall. You must irrigate." — C. J. 

 Manner, Jerome, Idaho. 



Plant Premiums All Postpaid. — An important feature of the distri- 

 bution of plant premiums this year is the fact that they will all be sent out 

 prepaid by parcel post, so that the recipients will not be put to any expense 

 in connection with receiving them. Last year many of them went by express 

 collect, but we found it a very expensive way of sending them, and have con- 

 cluded this year that the society would bear the expense of distribution, so 

 all the member pays is his annual fee to secure a share of these valuable 

 new fruits and other plants offered. 



New Fruits for Distribution.- — Have you read over carefully the 

 list of "new fruits" that are being offered as premiums to our membership 

 the coming spring? They include not only the more valuable of those offered 

 last spring, but also some new ones, the most interesting of which are 

 premium No. 14, the No. 1 raspberry seedling, a week earlier than No. 4, 

 that is doing so wonderfully well everywhere; also premium No. 17, which 

 is a June-bearing strawberry, No. 935, a larger fruit than No. 3, also offered, 

 and somewhat later. Supt. Haralson considers it an extraordinary variety. 

 Premium No. 20, a collection of scions of the new hybrid plum trees, should 

 attract the attention of every one who knows how to topgraft and has any 

 plum trees to graft on. There are twenty lots in this list of premiums, and 

 each member can select two lots. All this is given to a member, besides the 

 annual volume and the magazine for the year. 



Our Horticultural Building. — The "building committee" has been 

 very busy up to this date, January 19th, endeavoring to get the building bill 

 in shape so that it might pass the legislature and be enacted into law. A 

 number of meetings of the committee have been had with various mem- 

 bers of the legislature, until at the present time the matter stands something 

 as follows : It has been decided between our friends in the Senate Finance 

 Committee and members of the building committee that in order to secure 



(95) 



