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The Winter Protection of Plants, 



BY A. B. BAIRD. 



The Horticultural Society, I venture to think, can scarce- 

 ly render a better service to its members and the public 

 generally, than to make public what is known already about 

 the classes of plants that can with a little care be carried 

 through our Manitoba winter, and if possible extend the range 

 of plants capable of being cultivated here by studying how 

 plants with which we have hitherto not been successful, may 

 by the adoption of improved methods be assisted to withstand 

 the rigors of our severest seasons. This is a subject upon 

 which we can get little help from our friends to the South, 

 the East and the West of us, and we are therefore left to 

 work out our own destiny and discover what plants will live 

 in a state of nature with us and what by the exercise of a few 

 artificial precautions can be helped through the winter. 



My own three or four years of experimenting, of which I 

 have only recently begun to keep any memorandum, will 

 throw only very little light on the subject, for the conditions 

 of success are so numerous and so complex that one is obliged 

 to verify his tentative conclusions through a series of years 

 before we can announce them with confidence. What I have 

 to offer is therefore only a single contribution towards a body 

 of knowledge which will only be arrived at after we have all 

 observed and experimented and reported for a few years. And 

 there is abundant encouragement for us to go on in this line. 

 Who in Manitoba would have believed half a dozen years ago 

 that hybrid perpetual roses can with safety be wintered out 

 of doors with us ? And yet this is one of the conclusions 

 which I think I may venture to say is now pretty well estab- 

 lished. Who among us would not have laughed a few years 

 ago at the enthusiast who first risked his tulip bulbs by put- 

 ting them into the ground in October, but it has been done 



