24 lVisconsi/2 Fruit and Trees for 1868. 



If the farmer wishes to set many, they should be bought at one to two 

 feet high \ which can be had of some of our wholesale nurseries in the West 

 at ten to twenty dollars per hundred, and sometimes less. I have found 

 spring the best time to transplant. Be very cautious not to let the roots 

 dry in the least. In this way, I find them but very little more difficult to 

 transplant than the apple-tree. 



I cannot close this article on evergreens without calling attention to the 

 European larch (though not an evergreen) as the most profitable timber- 

 tree for the farmer to plant. Its growth is as rapid as any of the evergreens, 

 and, for a few years from the seed, more rapid. It is as durable as red 

 cedar : it will make the best of jDOSts, stakes, poles, railroad-ties ; and it is 

 available for almost all uses that wood is put to. We shall soon get up a 

 fever for the European larch nearly equal to that of the Early Rose 

 potato ; and that is high enough. 



The era of tree-planting is coming ; and they will soon spread over, 

 beautify, and benefit this prairie region ; and I believe the seeds of the 

 evergreens will in time begin to come up along the fences and hedges in 

 broken lands and woodlands. In parts of my nursery, the white cedar is 

 already numerous, two or three years old, self-sown. Suel Foster. 



Muscatine, Io., Sept. 19. 



WISCONSIN FRUIT AND TREES FOR 1868. 



The 3'ear 1868 is on its last quarter. Its history is written. Its ups 

 and downs are recorded in a variety of ways, but mainly unsatisfactor}' to 

 the grower. The fact of no fruit, and, in many cases, trees dead, is apparent. 

 The cause is not so easily discerned, and the remedies mostly theoretical. 

 In some instances, we know of whole nursery-blocks of one and two year old 

 trees which have been swept away by the winter and spring of 1868, vine- 

 yards "clean gone forever," and vines not only destroyed in the nursery, 

 but those several years planted in the vineyard. The cause of all this is 

 owing mainly, we think, to the extreme drought of 1867. At the setting-in 

 of winter, the ground was parched and dried to a great depth. This was 



