Fruits, Vegetables and General Interests. 



5i 



eludes the Soulard crab and other promising but unnamed 

 sorts, some of which are apples of good size and attractive 

 appearance. Specimens have been received this year of an 

 unnamed wild form of this species measuring nearly two and wild 

 a half inches in diameter. The botanical status of this species apples, 

 is not clearly determined. There is much reason for sup- 

 posing ijt to be a hybird between the common apple and 

 Pyrus loensis. But whatever its botanical position, its horti- 

 cultural merits deserve to become better known in the north- 

 west, where all attempts towards progress in apple-culture 

 must be made upon the hardiest stocks. 



The dewberries have recently been fully discussed by the 

 present writer in a bulletin of the Cornell Experiment Station. * 

 A dozen varieties, representing two distinct species, are 

 known to cultivation, and some of them already possess Dewberries 

 considerable importance. The juneberry or service-berry juneberry. 

 (Amelanchier Canadensis var. oblongifolia) has been before 

 the public for several years, and in point of hardiness, 

 vigor and productiveness deserves to rank high. The only 

 named variety appears to be the Success, introduced by 

 H. E. Van Deman, chief of the Division of Pomology of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, and who has given 

 me the following account of its history : 



"In December, 1873, I was traveling on horseback from my 

 home in Kansas to the annual meeting of the State Horticult- 

 ural Society, and learned by accident of the whereabouts of a 

 fruit, growing in a man's garden, that was called huckleberry. 

 On my way home I hunted up the place and found the bushes. 

 I was told that this so-called huckleberry bore abundantly 

 every year, and that it had been brought from Illinois to 

 that neighborhood. I afterwards learned that an old man 

 had brought seeds of the dwarf juneberry from the mountains 

 of Pennsylvania to Illinois, and from them grew this variety. 

 When he and his children went to Kansas, about 1868, they 

 took along a stock of the plants, and part of them were set at 

 the place where I found them. I had no trouble in securing 

 a few of the plants, which I immediately took home and set 

 out, and the next year, when the bloom appeared on them, I 

 learned by consulting the botany that it was amelanchier. 

 The plants grew so well that I went back the next year and 



*Bull. 34, Cornell Exp. Sta. Nov. 189T. 



