GENERAL FRUITS. 237 
brids, making something near an acre of anorchard. It began to bear 
in 1890, the fruit being fine. Last year it bore more heavily. Some of 
the trees were loaded with apples whieh sold readily in Faribault at 40 
cents per peck. My trees are nearly all low-headed, the limbs coming out 
close to the ground. I find it more difficult to protect them from rabbits 
headed low in this way, as they cut the smaller limbs off and bark 
them, and thus so mutilate them that the limbs do not shade the tree 
so perfectly, sometimes, as they would when leftintact. But still,for all 
this,I should train in this manner even if I had to fence them out. What 
is the sense in a long trunk that you must ‘“shade,” or ‘‘box,’ and fool 
with in other ways, which is as useless as a tail on a toad anyway. Your 
tree is, after being ‘‘boxed,” just as vulnerable to injury by sun scald 
aS mine is without being ‘*boxed.” The Wealthy apple is of such fine 
quality and a fair keeper that I shall raise some of them if the tree is half 
hardy. One trouble with it is—which makes it shorter lived —its tendency 
to overbear. I am experimenting a little and I think perhaps I am ‘“‘get- 
ting on to it” to keep it back from its overbearing proclivities. It isa 
fact that apple trees, when grown in a partial shade, will not bear so well, 
neither will they kill out so much. Ihave some Wealthys in the shade, 
on the north side near to my Scotch pine wind break, which are ten or 
twelve years old, and are all sound and healthy, and bearing lightly every 
year, and they now look asif they would live many years longer. 
In the fall of 1890,I procured some of the Peerless, after having examin- 
ed several thousands of them growing side by side with the Russians and 
other varieties such as we all are planting; the Peerless were on the 
same stocks as the others. I saw no touch of blight on the former, not 
even one top bud that I examined had failed to grow, while many of the 
others were injured more or less. I can see around here that many have 
set out a few of the Peerless, and I learn that a very considerable many 
farmers throughout our county are setting out this promising variety. 
Last summer, when apples were nearly at full size, there came a fero- 
cious wind from the south that blew off nearly all the Duchess, and the 
larger apples. As my orchard was well protected on the south by two 
heavy rows: of Scotch pines, the apples were all on the trees after the 
wind, while one of my neighbors said that it blew off every apple from 
his Duchess trees. If we wish to raise fruit, we must have some sort of 
a protection to break the force of these howling fierce winds, especially 
on the south and west sides of our orchards, for it is as necessary in sum- 
mer as in winter. 
The past attempts at fruit culture have indeed been most disastrous 
and discouraging in a superlative degree, almost enough so, seemingly, 
to dishearten everybody; but we never can and never will judge the 
future by the past. The faint heart never wins the fair lady. The good 
work of producing thousands upon thousands of new seedlings by hun- 
dreds of intelligent experimenters, by cross fertilization, has gone on till 
now we have in our possession an almost countless number of new young 
nursery trees that we think we can almost know will succeed here in our 
high latitude. 
It cheers our hearts as fruitgrowers to ‘‘hear this tread of pioneers,” of 
orchards “‘yet to be’’. 
