THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



reader, countryman, Canadians, what 

 shall your home be i 



It would be difficult to express the 

 pleasure with which we listened to this 

 paper, so sensible, so earnest, and so 

 full of hints for making home beauti- 

 ful, which any one who has any love of 

 nature in his soul can put into practice. 



Mr. W. H. Ragan followed with a 

 short paper on the insect enemies of 

 the orchard, in which he showed that 

 they could be mastered if orchardists, 

 large and small, would act in concert 

 with the object of winning the day in 

 view, otherwise he feared they would 

 never be overcome. The discussion 

 elicited by this paper was to the effect 

 that orchardists can secure good crops 

 of fruit despite the negligence of the 

 careless by keeping up a constant and 

 vigilant war upon the injurious insects 

 of eveiy kind. 



The evening session was opened with 

 the reading of a paper on raspberry 

 management and the new raspberries, 

 by Mr. J. C. Evans, of Missouri, in 

 which he stated that land having a gen- 

 tle inclination in any direction, except 

 south or south-west, and that would 

 produce a good crop of corn, was suita- 

 ble for raspberry culture. He would 

 plant in rows seven feet apart, and three 

 feet apart in the row, and devote the 

 ground solely to raspberries, doubting 

 the economy of planting any other crop 

 between the rows at any time. On the 

 new varieties he did not throw much 

 light, merely stating that some were 

 planting Hopkins and Gregg as the 

 moi-e profitable black-caps, and that 

 Turner and Thwack were the popular 

 red raspberries. Mr. D. B. Wier, of 

 Arkansas, read a paper on the persim- 

 mon in his state, but the conditions are 

 so unlike those of our climate that we 

 took no notes of it, nor of the paper by 

 Mr. W. M. Samuels, of Kentucky, on 

 the new apples of value for market, 

 which treated almost exclusively of 



southern varieties. Mr. T. T. Lyon, of 



Michigan, submitted the report of the 

 committee on fruits exhibited, stating 

 that there were 145 plates of apples 

 exhibited by the Missouri Yalley Horti- 

 cultural Society, and sixty varieties of 

 apples and three of pears exhibited bv 

 Mr. Geo. P. Peffer, of Wisconsin. Of 

 the Salome apple, which has been 

 attracting considerable notice of late, 

 the i-eport says that it is a fine looking, 

 medium sized fruit, in perfect condi- 

 tion, and of fair sprightly flavor, fine 

 grained, juicy and agreeable ; said to be 

 in good eating condition from autumn 

 until late spring with only ordinary 

 cai'e, and expresses the opinion that if 

 valuable, it will probably be so on 

 account of some quality of the tree or 

 fruit that peculiarly fits it for the cli- 

 mate of Illinois. 



Thus was closed the sessions of the 

 Mississippi "Valley Horticultural So- 

 ciety. Many papers of gi-eat value were 

 not read at the meeting for want of 

 time, but they are all published in the 

 "V olume of Transactions, which may be 

 had for the sum of one dollar on appli- 

 cation to Mr. W. H. Ragan, Secretary, 

 Lafayette, Indiana. 



PROTECTING GRAPE VINES IX 

 WINTER. 



In the cold parts of the province it 

 is the safer way to lay the grape vines 

 down at the approach of winter in 

 order to secure crops of fruit. By lay- 

 ing the vines down the evaporation is 

 lessened, and when the snow falls they 

 are covered by it, and thus protected 

 until it is melted. It is the frosty 

 drying winter winds sweeping through 

 the vine branches if left on the trellis 

 that injure the buds, seemingly lower- 

 ing the vital force so that they push 

 feebly, if at all, on the return of warm 

 weather. The writer has seen vines 

 through which the sap ran freely, un- 

 able to burst a bud ; the buds were 



