STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 431 



among " Tree Peddlers. " This is the first opportunity I have had 

 of meeting in connection with this society, although I have been 

 slowly plodding along in this good work just across the ''Father 

 of Waters," for about twenty-five years, and after meeting in our 

 own State such worthy members of your society as President 

 Smith, Geo. Peffer, A. J. Phillips, E. Wilcox, J. C. Plumb, and 

 others, it is not strange that I had looked forward to this meet- 

 ing with high anticipations of pleasure and profit. To under- 

 take to show up all the failures that we have met with from time 

 to time during the past twenty-five years would require all the 

 time usnally devoted to one of your winter sessions. 



The first cause of failure that came under my observation on 

 my arrival in Minnesota was that of planting trees that origin- 

 ated in ^N^ew England and the Middle States, none of which 

 proved of sufficient hardiness to withstand our higher and dryer 

 climate. 



2. One great cause of failure was lack of care and cultivation, 

 allowing the trees to dry up during seasons of drought. Have 

 never yet seen an orchard in our State that was plowed and cul- 

 tivated as much as it should have been. Every time you plow 

 and drag an orchard you destroy millions of insect eggs, and at 

 the same time kill myriads of insects that play such sad havoc 

 on both tree and fruit. Thorough cultivation serves the double 

 purpose of ridding the soil of injurious insect life, and bringing 

 the trees safely through a season of protracted drought, which 

 without such thorough cultivation sometimes causes the death 

 of more trees than our most severe winters. There is no substi- 

 tute/or moisture in the orchard; it must be constantly kept up or 

 your trees will surely perish. The more you cultivate, the bet- 

 ter is the soil ijrepared to utilize the moisture from the atmos- 

 phere, and in no other way can you successfully combat the oft 

 repeated objection that Minnesota is too high and dry for success- 

 ful fruit culture. 



3. Failures caused by locating orchards in low, frosty valleys, 

 and in many cases too closely and heavily sheltered by tall for- 

 est trees, thus shutting out a free circulation of air, which is so 

 essential in districts subject to blight. Have seen rows of Duch- 

 ess blighted to the ground in such unfavorable situations, and 

 have never known them to suffer the effects of blight in any 

 other locations. 



4. Another prolific cause of failure in Minnesota has recently 

 been found to consist in planting too many Siberian crabs and 



