SMALL FRUITS. 329 



they have made a strong growth. Last spring. I received from him 

 Boynton's Great Pacific, Scliuster's Gem, Lovett' Early and BederWood. 

 They have all done well, but Beder Wood has made the best growth. On 

 Mrs. Bonniwell's grounds: Warfleld No. 2, with Capt. Jack as fertilizer, have 

 done the best. Crescent and Jessie have done well; Bubach and Haverland 

 are on trial; May King, Kentuclcy, Freeman, Jumbo and Jersey Queen 

 are of no account. She tried the Princess three years; it has not borne a 

 berry. Bidweli has done well. 



Grapes: Of grapes she has Concord, Janesville and Delaware. Concord 

 has done the best. 



Blackberries: Snyder does well; Ancient Briton and Stone's Hardy, 

 though covered in winter, are a failure. On Mrs. Bell's grounds, four 

 miles southeast of Mrs. Bonniwell's, Snyder blackberry does best without 

 covering. Tied some of them to stakes and wrapped hay around them 

 for protection, but those left alone did the best by far. 



Blackcap raspberries: Gregg does well by covering; Doolittle does well 

 without. Gregg raspberry does well by bending down the tips and 

 covering with a little dirt. Souhegan bears heavily but are not as hardy. 

 Doolittle does flnely, splendid. Bed raspberries: Shaeffer's Colossal, with 

 tips covered, is a heavy bearer; Hansel is hardy and proliflc;Turner does the 

 best of all. Mrs. Bell considers the Minnetonka Chief the best and most 

 perfect strawberry she has. Finch's Prolific is very large for the first two 

 or three pickings, but as she sums them all up she says "after all, the 

 Crescent and Charles Downing have given the best satisfaction." Grapes: 

 Concord, Duchess, Niagara, Lady and Moore's Early have not done as well 

 as Janesville, Brighton, Worden and Delaware. 



At one place I visited I found a prune tree growing. It is five years 

 old and it is all of eight and^ perhaps, ten feet' high and 12 inches in 

 circumference. It bore two or three prunes last year; this year it bore 

 several. Plums were almost an entire failure this year. 



At one place I called in the suburbs of Hutchinson, I found a man who 

 had bought of an agent fruit to the amount of one hundred and ten 

 dollars. When I spoke to the man about it he exclaimed: "What do you 

 want to know anything about it for? Did you come to pay for them?" 

 I said "No, sir! Nor to replace them either, but I would have sold them 

 to you for one dollar a hundred, and they would not have needed replac- 

 ing." I then told him why I wished to know. He said: "You can just 

 tell them I was swindled out of one hundred and ten dollars, and that is 

 just all there is about it." He had bought two thousand raspberry plants. 

 At first they said they were all dead, afterward his wife said there might 

 possibly be twenty-five alive, but doubted it. He said when he received 

 them the roots were daubed with blue clay, and it adhered to them like 

 glue, and he could not soak or wash it off. He said: "It sticks there to- 

 day just as tight as when I set them." One of our neighbors bought of the 

 same agent red raspberry plants. When I called there he told me there was 

 not one alive. He had bought some mountain ash at $2.00 apiece. When I 

 came home, I looked over several catalogues and found prices ranging from 

 thirty-five to fifty cents. The editor of the Hutchinson Leader, in com- 

 menting on a farewell sermon delivered in that town said, "He roasted 

 his flock to a religious brown." But it seems to me that such unscrupu- 

 lous agents ought to be cremated, and let "go up in smoke." lam 

 thinking it will be their only opportunity of ascension. 



