518 ANNUAL REPORT. 



the Duchess of Oldenberg to interior Russia, and have followed it 

 up by recent explorations, that the principal reason why the east 

 has so far beaten us in apple culture is that you have had this ad- 

 aptation in your favor in planting the apple of the coast regions of 

 Europe. We in our thirty years of general failure have been copy- 

 ing after you in the selection of races of the apple, without any 

 adaptation at all except in the few sorts that you had, happily for us, 

 from the Russian steppes. We now have facts on which to base a 

 reasonable conjecture that what we call the severities of our climate 

 offer no insuperable barrier to our pushing even the true winter 

 -apple well up towards the northern limit of the wheat plant. Prof. 

 Budd and Charles Gribb, tell us that at Simbersk, the home of the 

 Duchess, and at Kazan where the winters are as cold, snows incon- 

 stant, changes as sudden, and summers as hot and dry as the worst 

 of ours, are to be found the largest commercial orchards on the 

 globe —not alone of the apple, but of the pear, the cherry, and the 

 plum, and that they found there last fall, the steamboats and 

 barges of the Volga loaded to the water's edge with winter apples 

 going south to market. To that country and to the production of 

 new seedlings of our own we look for the extension of our pom- 

 ology. 



Mr. President, it has been a great pleasure to me, as the throngs 

 of people have passed through your halls this week, and stopped 

 to talk with me about the Minnesota fruit, to find so many people 

 as there were who have friends in the new northwest, latelj'' set- 

 tled there, and to note the satisfaction it gave these visitors to find 

 the evidence that their friends have not gone beyond the limit 

 where it is possible for the settlers to raise their own fruit. I 

 could see that many an anxious one's heart grew happier with the 

 thought that besides getting some money out of wheat the settler 

 out there might have a pleasant home. From the apple tree the 

 imagination soon brings into view the shade tree, the evergreen, 

 the rose bush, the lilac, the creeper over the porch, the bed of 

 flowers upon the lawn. They all go together. 



I have spoken of forests. The question of adaptation is of the 

 first importance in this, but it is being studed out and worked out. 

 Forests will yet cover the arid regions of the northwestern plains. 

 Whether the rainfall will be increased thereby or not, evaporation 

 will be retarded, which is practically all the same. Trees will cast 

 their grateful shade, flowers will cluster round his door, and fruits, 

 — home grown, — will cheer the table and the fireside of the pioneer 

 even there. 



