* 
76 ANNUAL REPORT. 
season, September; size, medium; quality, fair; color, green, slightly 
streaked with dull red. I will say in this conne:tion that I had expected, 
among so many new Russians, to find something earlier than I bad ever 
before seen, but was disappointed in flnding nothing quite so early as the 
Red Astrachan. A variety received under the name of Winter O'Porto 
ripened in August. Visited the extensive orchards of Mr. E. B. Jordon. 
He reports two hundred varieties on trial, generally looking well, and 
mostly hardy, but very few have yet fruited, and all are summer fruit. 
Among them White Astrachan; season, August lst. Visited Mr. Rollins, 
of Elgin, Wabasha Co. He has a fine collection of new Russian varieties, 
quite a goodly nimber of which fruited the past season, generally of fair 
«quality, and mostly hardv,—all early. ‘The reports are so much alike from 
all the different fruit growers in this section that I deem it of too little 
interest to the Society to extend them further. 
If the past season has been a fair test of the new Russians in this part of 
the State, then we have gleaned enough from these several reports to estab- 
lish the following facts, viz.: lst, they are mostly hardy; 2d, the season of 
a great majority of them is August; 3d, none of them, so far as yet reported, 
are winter. Every variety adopted, and put on the records of this Society, 
should, as far as possible, be rightly named, and its’ proper season indicated. 
Unless -trongly guarded against by every true horticulturist of the State, 
there will be gross injustice practiced upon the unsuspecting farmer and 
fruit- grower by the tree-dealer and peddler, more espgcially, perhaps, from 
other States, by selling these new summer and fall fruits as-winter. I am. 
credibly informed that the Alexander, raised in Ohio, and sold in this 
State under the name of Emperor Alexander, Russian Emperor, Czar, &c., 
has been sold as winter fruit, while Downing gives its season October and 
November; and, having fruited it myself, I can testify to the fact of its being 
a fall fruit. Now, many of these wise men of the East are magicians. They 
will strike a new summer or fall fruit with their little wand (they prefer a 
new name that the farmer has never before heard of) and repeat the words, 
‘« Presto cuange,’’ and bebold, the summer fruit is changed to winter! One 
of these wise men informed your committee that he had transformed our 
old pet, the Duchess, and made of it a good reliable winter fruit, and was 
about to apply for letters patent. Now, I have been diligently searching 
for the last twenty years, for a winter fruit that should prove in every 
respect equal to the Duchess of Oldenburg; and now to have the real 
Duch-ss suddenly thrust upon my admiring gaze, with all the keeping qual- 
ities of a Boston russet! Why, it makes me feel, as far as my labors are 
concerned, that I might just as well heve been a Rip Van Winkle as a 
searcher after winter fruit. Edison’s great scientific discoveries are no 
more wonderful than this. I was conversing, not long since, with a gen- 
tleman who was formerly engaged in the nursery business in Sweden. I 
asked him if he was acquainted there with the White Astrachan. He 
replied that he was. I then asked to know its season. His answer was, 
winter. Now, Downing tells us in his work on ‘‘ Fruit and Fruit Trees of 
America,” that the season of the White Astrachan in this country is 
August Ist, and, judging from all the information that I am able to gather 
from the winter truits of Sweden, I would as soon depend on the magician’s 
wand. 
