STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 67 



Duchess this spring. He considers this variety our main dependance 

 for standard fruit, at least for the present. His Wealthy trees, both 

 in orchard and nursery, were pretty nearly all killed to the snow line; 

 hence he does not recotniuend them, and will plant no more of them. 



On the third of June we visited the orchard and nursery of Vice- 

 president Sias, at Rochester. But as he is present we prefer to have 

 a report from him in person. 



Mr. M. W. Cook, of Rochester, informed us that his trees were 

 badly injured by the past severe winter, but he gathered consolation 

 from the fact that in Missouri, from which State he had recently re- 

 turned, the fruit trees had been nearly all destroyed from the severity 

 of the past winter; an illustration, perhaps, of the adage that "misery 

 loves company." 



We also met Mr. F. K. Phoenix, of Delavan, Wisconsin, at Rochester, 

 who reported sad havoc to the trees of that locality, especially with 

 the so-called Waupaca Seedlings, among which is the Wolf River, or 

 Alexander. He expressed the opinion that hardy new seedlings must 

 be sought out as our chief dependance for apples in the future, both of 

 Russian and native varieties. 



Mr. A. W. Sias, of Rochester, was then called upon and presented 

 the following report : 



OUTLOOK FOR FRUIT. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the State Horticultural Society : 



Perhaps there is no being more commonly and grossly misrepresented 

 than the Supreme Being of the Universe Just after the winter of 

 1872-3, a preacher of the Gospel said to me, ''Well, Mr. Sias, the Lord 

 has killed all the fruit trees, but it will be just as well for you, as they 

 will buy and fill right up again." It perhaps did not occur to him, 

 that it would bother me to furnish live trees to fill up with, in a country 

 where they were all dead. And farther, that if I shipped them in from 

 a more southern clime, that others like himself would have too little 

 confidence in the pleasure that the Ruler of the Universe is said to 

 have in "giving good gifts to his children," to purchase so extensively 

 as to make it as well for me as before. Another man said to me on 

 the street at Rochester, not long ago, that "the fruit trees in the 

 country were all killed — wood literally killed to the bark.'^ This is 

 true as far as the wood of the Duchess is concerned in southern Minne- 

 sota, and a most severe test of my doctrine that a "Black hearted 



