188 ANNUAL EEPOKT. 



Switzerland, previous to the migrations of tlie early Argus. By the slow and uner- 

 ring law of evolution, through centuries of transplanting, hybridation and fertil- 

 izing culture, it has reached its present perfectable condition. Hence, it must 

 have a location, a soil, an atmosphere exactly fitted to its progressed structure and 

 instincts. In the attempt to shelter the apple tree, suppose you plant it in the 

 woods to feed on decayed leaves, locusts and wild honey. What a shriveled, scrub- 

 by, lousey thing it is! If it has health enough, bring it forth into the freer light 

 and air, into cottonwood soil where you can love it into life, and see how quick it 

 undergoes a "revival of religion." 



Prof. Budd, of the Agricultural College at Ames, Iowa, in his able report on 

 "North of Europe Fruits, Trees and Shrubs," calls our attention to the wonderful 

 success of orcharding in nearly all the provinces of Russia. Speaking of the prov- 

 ince of Kazan on the upper waters of the Volga, whose southern boundary is on the 

 55th parallel of north latitude, he says: "The largest and best orchards are on 

 the lowest bluffs on the west banks of the Volga, or on the dry prairies just back 

 of these bluffs. We found the dwarf-appearing trees loaded with high colored and 

 really good fruit, and we could see scarce a trace of injury by the terrible winters 

 of this latitude.^' He also informs us that the thermometer there, has often been 

 known to reach fifty-eight degrees below zero. In other provinces of the hyper- 

 borean climates of the great empire are found vast orchards of cherries, as well as 

 apples, and pears of the improved varieties. He and his horticultural compatriots 

 were sanguine that root grafts or top-grafts from those hardy Russian sorts would 

 be a pre-eminent success on our western prairies, dating their conclusion on similar 

 dryness of air and rigor of climate, with the odds in our favor, because our soil coun- 

 terparts that of the Russian plains, with greater natural richness in the main. But 

 the test thus far largely disappoints expectations. While some Russian varieties 

 have proved successful, it is found they are no more so than some of our native pro- 

 ductions. We are therefore thrown back again upon our own resources to build 

 our hopes where we must — on primary fitness to insure mastery for the apple and 

 other fruits, over heat and cold, wind and storm. 



Russia is an old country. Vegetations, animals, humanities have there lived and 

 died, their bodies rotting and elementally rising again in improved forms; the pri- 

 mates of structure evolutionally progressed. Hence, apples, pears, plums, cher- 

 ries, apricots are profitably raised there in localities much higher than our own, 

 some of these flourishing where the Sirrocco of the north freezes the ground six, 

 eight, ten, twfflve feet. Our prairie soil is new in use; some of it just subduing by 

 the plow. Give us a tenth of the time Russia has had to prepare for such fruits, 

 give us but twenty years more, with closer analysis of soils, with improved fertili- 

 zers, with an education working from the school, to the field, and factory, with our 

 forests then grown into paternal protection, with freer brains to think and sweeter 

 hearts to feel, and see if we do not make our prairie lands the fruit Eden of the 

 western continent. 



The meeting adjourned till 2 o'clock p. m. 



