288 ANNUAL REPORT. 



tation to low lands — to sandy soils and to clay soils. There are 

 trees that have a general adaptation, and others with special adap- 

 tation. While the Dutchess is general and the Wealthy nearly as 

 much so — if a farmer have a valley location, sandy or Avhere the 

 water comes near the surface, let him plant the Wolf River, a 

 variety whose parent tree now thirty-two years old in Waupaca 

 county, Wisconsin, stands where its roots touch the waters of the 

 river, whence it takes its name, and whose progeny scattered well 

 throughout the West, show, as I am informed by J, C. Plumb, of 

 Milton, the same adaptation to low, sandy or wet soils. A large 

 State like Minnesota has variable climates and soils. There are 

 adaptations for all, that must be studied. Russia, as said by Prof. 

 Budd, is a great country. It has its counterparts probably for all 

 the climates and soils of our American apple belt. It not enough 

 to say Russia?!. We must know from what part of Russia. It is 

 not enough to say Minnesota, We must know what part of Min- 

 nesota. Is it where the dry cold arctic winds sweep up the valley 

 of the Red River of the north ? Is it where the moist winds from 

 the Gulf of Mexico, or the St. Lawrence and the great lakes, the 

 hot air of the southwestern plains, or the mild breezes of the Pacific, 

 fugitives from the Chinook, squeezed of their vapors in passing over 

 the steeps or the forests of the Rocky Mountains, mostly or in part 

 prevail? Is it on the wide prairie sweeps, the bluff lands with 

 their air drainage, above as well as below ground, the timber and 

 prairie openings, or the dense forest regions of the big woods? 

 All these are questions which must be studied in order to make 

 fruit raising profitable in Minnesota. 



A man must not begrudge a dollar for his state horticultural 

 society, or two dollars for the Mississippi Valley Society, to secure 

 him its reports to read on all the vital points in the business, and 

 pay twenty dollars for a worthless bill of trees that the books 

 would have warned him of. 



Selection of a few only of the hardiest for general orchard- 

 ing is important for many reasons, but these reasons are so open 

 and palpable that it almost seems a waste of time to mention them. 

 A man must go for sure things to some or to the main extent to 

 keep his courage up. Everlasting failure or liability to it will beat 

 the toughest orchard crank in time, as it does the Keeley motor or 

 the inventor of perpetual motion. The man in Wisconsin who said 

 several years ago, before the Wealthy was found, " If I were to set 

 out a new orchard of one hundred trees, I would plant ninety-nine 

 Duchess and one Duchess of Oldenburg," was not far from right. 



