Mr. Older:  I had considerable experience in putting out seedling plums.  When large enough to get to bearing there wasn’t a good one in the whole lot.  I got some plums, the finest I could pick out, and three years ago they first came into bearing, and one of my neighbors went over there when they were ripe and said they were the best plums he had seen, but since then I have had none.  I got some Emerald plums from Mr. Cook.  They were nice plums, and when he came to see them he said, “I came to see plums, I didn’t come to see apples,” but the brown rot gets a good many of them.  I had some last year, and just before they ripened the brown rot struck them, and it not only took all the fruit but got the small branches as well.  I don’t know what to do about the brown rot.

Mr. Drum:  I would say that my experience was something like Mr. Older’s with the sand cherry crosses.  They grew until they were large and I sprayed them with lime-sulphur.  I couldn’t see any injury from that until they were grown, nearly ripe, and then in spite of me in a single day they would turn and would mummy on the trees.  I had a Hanska and Opata and the other crosses, and they bore well.  They were right close to them, and the brown rot didn’t affect them particularly.

Mr. Ludlow:  I would like to ask these experts what is the life of a plum tree.  Now, an apple tree, we have them that have been bearing for forty years, but my plum trees that were put out less than twenty years ago, they got to be a thicket and they don’t bear any large plums at all.  I introduced years ago, if you remember, the Ocheeda plum, that come from seedlings that we found in the wild plum at Ocheeda Lake.  It is a very fine plum.  I had about twelve bushels this year, and I have never seen a bit of brown rot in that variety of plums, although the other varieties, if they bore at all, they were brown rotted all over.  The Ocheeda plum has a very thin skin, and when the rain comes at the right time and the sun comes out they all split open.  That is its fault.  But my orchard is getting old; it is twenty years old.  I had a young man work for me, and he left me and bought a new place.  I told him he could take up all the sprouts he wanted of those Ocheeda plums.  He did so and put out an orchard of them.  I think that was about ten years ago.  This year while my plums didn’t average me, my Ocheedas didn’t average, over an inch or an inch and an eighth in diameter from that old orchard—­he had sold out and gone to California—­but from that orchard a man that never thinks of cultivating sold three wagon loads of the finest plums I ever saw.

Mr. Kellogg:  How large were the wagons? (Laughter.)

Mr. Ludlow:  Well, the ordinary wagon box.  He hauled them and sold them in town.  That was from an orchard that had been left without any cultivation.