324 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



chance in development by crossing our six native species, and 

 then planting these native hybrids alongside of the Japanese hy- 

 brids, and I feel sure the native crosses will soon demonstrate 

 their superiority over all those with foreign blood in them. 



We must take the natives for our trying climate, the same 

 as we had to do in the American grape industry. So far as I 

 known no vinifera grape hybrid is a pronounced success in the 

 prairie states. 



And when the pomologists will use common sense they will 

 find out that some day our plum industry will have sprung from 

 the six native species. 



These foreign blooded hybrids are all right for California — 

 but so far as I have watched them here, very few of them are 

 much more than novelties. 



I am in my seventy-fourth year, and it is hardly possible I 

 shall see the end of the craze for hybrids that sooner or later 

 must manifest weak points. I have tested more Japanese 

 and Chinese plums in Iowa than most of plum culturists, and I 

 have not found anything to excel, or even to equal, our improved 

 natives, much less to exclusively use them for a permanent 

 foundation, or for a successful foundation for our prairie horti- 

 culture in plum culture. 



If I were a young man I should heed the two or three hun- 

 dred years wasted in trying to build the American grape indus- 

 try upon the vinifera, or European grapes, and stick to and rely 

 principally upon the native plum, that even without any scien- 

 tific breeding even now rivals the Oriental and Domestic species 

 that have had human culture thousands of years, while the 

 native is scarcely rescued from the woods and the plum thickets 

 of our prairie states. 



Thanking you for any information you can give me on 

 plums. 



Yours truly, 



A. B. DENNIS. 



Mr. Gardner: Don't you think that these Japanese hy- 

 brids you have been speaking of, if they were planted on dry 

 ground and planted a good distance apart where they would have 

 good air drainage all seasons, that a great many of them would 

 probably be successful? 



Mr. Cook: Why, I think a great many of them are suc- 

 cesses. That is why I recommended planting some of them. I 

 couldn't tell that in the paper because I had too short a time. 



Mr. Gardner: Don't you think that is one difficulty, we 

 don't plant them on the right soil? 



Mr. Cook: I don't know. I think any soil that is dry 

 enough is all right for the plum. They will stand as low as the 



