GENERAL FRUITS. 291 
as a few Russian pits, Desota, Rollingstone, hybridized, Dakota and Man- 
itoba plum pits have been carefully kept with the chance of producing 
seedlings that can at least grow side by side with Desota, Rollingstone, 
Cheney, Hawkeye, Owatonna, etc., and may bring the possibility of 
raising cultivated plums and cherries in Manitoba nearer success. Of the 
apple trees longest planted quite a number are showing fruit spurs, and 
I am promising myself the pleasure of bringing some specimens to your 
annual meeting in 1898. Over 80 plums and cher ries( Ostheim) blossomed 
the past season, but late frosts and hail left only a few samples. 
The varieties giving most promise of success are: 
Crubs —Tonka, Cherry Red, Martha, October, Florence, Red Lake; 
Whitney, Childs, Dartts, Greenwood, Gibb, Transcendent. 
Apples — Liehy, Red Gheeked, Rubetz Naliv, Charlamoff, Koursk Anis, 
Red Repka, Pointed Pipka, Antonovka, Hibernal, Arabian, Victor, Os- 
trekoff. 
Plums — Desota, Cheney, Rollingstone, Luedloff’s seedlings, Owatonna. 
Cherries —Ostheim, Cerise, Besarabian. 
Northern Iowa and southern Minnesota experimenters, where winter’s 
cold extorts the cry, ‘‘ Frost is King,” and summer’s heat is said to be 
semi-tropical, seem to call for Steele County elevations and subsoils loose 
enough to permit the roots of trees to penetrate subterranean springs to 
supply the moisture excessive evaporation would otherwise deprive them 
of. In this, the basin of the extinct Lake Agassiz, which Professor Bryce 
informs us has for ages been receiving on its rock bottom the drifts ffom 
the higher elevations, until now its shores are contracted to the deeper 
depressions of lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba,thus changing water courses 
and even, as he asserts, deflecting the flow of the Red River from the Mis- 
sissippi to Lake Winnipeg. In all this there seems to me the right forces 
at work, when we know howto apply them, tosolvethe problem of horti- 
cultural possibilities in the near future. It may be that what applies to 
northern Iowa and southern Minnesota as to elevation, air, drainage, etc.;, 
would have to be modified here about 800 feet above the sea level; but from 
the fact that many of the varieties of apple, plum, etc., reported and 
recommended as almost worthy of general planting, have done as well 
here as with you; and as the northern portion of your state, in similar 
surroundings to ours, should have the benefit of y our deliberations, I have 
penned these rather rambling remarks in order that a general discussion 
may follow that will be beneficial not only to beyond but beneath the 
49th parallel of latitude. 
Mr. Barrett: I had a conversation with Mr. Frankland aif 
the time he made us a visit two or three years ago, in reference 
to the environment of his locality, and he informed me that. a 
vast forest extended north of it. It is doubtless due to 
the very fact that there is a vast forest there that protects 
him from the frozen winds of the north that he will probably 
be as successful there in that northern region, as they are in 
Russia on the same parallel. I throw out this thought by way 
of calling attention again to the necessity of our giving more 
attention to forestry. 
