A FEW REMARKS. 143 



best tree for wind-breaks north of the Platte river. It certainly is 

 not the box-elder, but pre-eminently the white or so-called gray Rus- 

 sian willow. All the rest you say in your excellent article, I heartily 

 endorse. 



As to the planting of apple trees and pear trees, I have very little 

 to say, my orchard being on low bottom land, hence not suitably 

 located. Even the Ben Davis are all dying with me. Pears all 

 failed. On high rolling and deep soil I think that success will fol- 

 low. With me, in my location, it is useless. 



My apple orchard is badly thinned out, and I have a notion to try 

 replanting with Russian apricots. I have tried quite a number of va- 

 rieties of the Russian apples, but find the fruit very much inferior to 

 our native apples, all late varieties becoming with me early summer 

 apples. 



About crabs blighting, my experience is that Whitney No. 20 does 

 blight, but not as badly as does Transcendant. About the Elvira, I 

 would say that it is comparatively hardy, but not ironclad. 



About the best evergreens, I would have answered the red cedar, 

 and pre-eminently the silver spruce of the Rocky mountains. 



As to grapes, I beg leave to give you my opinion thus : The Con- 

 cord is yet the grape for the million. Should I make a selection of 

 those you enumerate (and I have grown nearly all those varieties you 

 name for many years) I would prefer to plant Concord, Brighton, 

 Champion, Delaware, Diana, Martha, Moore's Early, Telegraph, 

 Lady, Worden, Cottage, Perkins, Elvira, and a few varieties you do 

 not name. In general, you are correct, I think, about what you say 

 about the grapes, and all I could add is as follows : Delaware does 

 best if grafted on the root of our wild grapes, and then even poor 

 soil is good enough for this, the finest of all our grapes. The Cottage 

 is one of our very best black grapes, and should be "boomed." The 

 Goethe (although my favorite poet) I would discard entirely for Ne- 

 braska, is too late in ripening. Noah mildews every year badly, is 

 other ways the hardiest vine of all we have got ; it may do well on 

 high elevated locations. Elvira is good for wine ; as a table grape I 

 do not want it. 



In conclusion of this rambling remarks, I desire to say : that my 

 notion about rational forest culture in our prairie country is to pre- 

 cede the planting of hard wood and more valuable trees by planting 



