74 
Duane’s Purple Gage, German Prune or Quetsche ; most of these varie¬ 
ties were exhibited by me at the State Fair. I have in all thirty-seven 
varieties in my garden, of which the nineteen remaining varieties will 
probably fruit next summer. I can then give you a more extensive com¬ 
parative statement of the hardiness and profits of the different varieties. 
The soil upon which they are grown is yellow clay, rather stony, with 
about two inches of surface soil of black vegetable mould. It is plowed 
to the depth of ten inches, with good after-culture, as I grow upon it 
market vegetables, potatoes, beets, ruta bagas, turnips, cabbages, dec. 
I apply common barn yard manure to it every second year, and in the 
places where ruta bagas and turnips are to be planted I use five bushels 
of leached ashes with one half peck of salt to one-eighth of an acre of 
land. This is put into the drills when planting, and seems to be bene¬ 
ficial to pear trees and gooseberries, which both do well with me. In 
the spring of 1851, I bought some three or four thousand seedling plum 
trees, of one summer’s growth, which were sent out from the East, in¬ 
tending them for stocks to graft upon. I planted all but about two 
hundred in very rich mucky soil, in nursery rows, for the purpose of 
having them grow fast. In August of the same year, to my great dis¬ 
appointment, all the leaves fell off and their season’s growth apparently 
ceased, but in the forepart of September they leafed out again and con¬ 
tinued their growth until winter, when most of them died. Those that 
lived exhibited the same effects the second summer and died the following* 
winter. 
“ By watching closely during the second summer, I found that in July 
the leaves began to look somewhat rusty, and soon discovered small holes 
through them, apparently pierced by an insect, but I could not find any. 
I informed a brother nurseryman of these facts, and he said that it was 
probably the effect of a disease w T ith which the trees were afflicted before 
they were brought to this State but which did not appear, as they were 
taken up in the fall, and kept in a cellar until spring, aw r ay from frost, 
and that the same disease existed in Eastern nurseries. 
“ The two hundred trees that I reserved Tvere somewhat larger than 
those first planted. I set them out in my garden in a bed prepared for 
ruta bagas. They grew well and I budded them the following August, 
and nearly all grew, and they are now large enough to transplant into 
orchards. Ten or twelve buds died, but the disease did not appear. 
