DEVELOPING HARDY FRUITS. 81 



couraging the raising of seedling apples, it is quite common for 

 fifty or one hundred plates of good seedlings to be exhibited at 

 the September meeting of the State Agricultural Society. Some 

 of these are of much promise. 



The early settlers of this section found that the plums with 

 which they were familiar in Europe, or in the Eastern States, 

 were not hardy here, but that the native plums produced an enor- 

 mous amount of fruit each year which was gathered in large 

 quantities by the settlers. This fruit in its native state is per- 

 haps one of the highest developed of any native fruit, and 

 it was natural for the settlers to select the better trees from the 

 woods and transplant them to their gardens. As a result of 

 this work, and also of encouragement in the raising of seedling 

 plums, we have now quite a list of plums that are well adapted 

 for this section, and some of them are of very excellent quality 

 and desirable for marketing. A new class of plums is now coin- 

 ing to us as the result of the combining of the native wild plum 

 (P. Americana) with the dwarf Sandcherry (P. Besseyi). From 

 this has come the so-called Compass cherry and a number of 

 other fruits of considerable interest, and of probable value. 

 The work of combining our native plum with the Japanese 

 plums, to which it is closely related, has hardly been touched 

 upon, but it seems to offer one of the most promising lines for 

 experiment, and the Experiment Station of the University is 

 putting a considerable amount of time on to the work of securing 

 combinations of this sort. We think that from this work we 

 ought to get plums of large size and good quality that are per- 

 fectly hardy, which will add very much to the pomology of this 

 section. 



We find that strawberries in this section are much more 

 liable to be injured in winter than in the States farther east where 

 the winters are milder, although when the beds are thoroughly 

 protected here with straw they will produce heavy crops, and the 

 Experiment Station is trying to obtain a hardier variety of 

 strawberries than we now have, by crossing our cultivated 

 kinds and some of the hardier forms. 



The cultivated kinds of raspberries must be covered here 

 in winter or they are liable to be severely injured. It is im- 



