The seed of standard winter apples top-grafted on hardy stocks like Hibernal should be carefully saved as nature may have smiled with indulgence upon your efforts and created the desired variety.  I am watching with great interest a tree of very vigorous, smooth growth, from seed of Talman Sweet top-grafted on Duchess.  You would not expect to get anything hardy from seed of the Talman Sweet, but the entire hardiness so far of the young trees propagated from the original seedling, makes me impatient to see the fruit.  A blend of Talman Sweet and Duchess ought certainly to bring something good, but they will not all be hardy or all good.  The fact that there are so many different lines of pedigree available to us in our apple work, makes it all the more necessary for us to divide the work.

Let us gather inspiration from the story of Johnny Apple-Seed—­one of the patron saints of American horticulture—­who about one hundred and twenty-five years ago forced his way through the wilderness of Indiana and Ohio and planted many bushels of apple seed as he went along, so that when settlers came they found their orchards ready for them.  The story of John Chapman and his unselfish efforts in planting the seed of apples and other fruits in the American wilderness should give us courage and patience to give a little of our time to this work.  Make a record of what seeds you plant, and when the seedlings are one year of age plant them out in a row where they can be cultivated.  Select the best ones as they fruit and bring to the state fair or horticultural meeting.  You may not win the grand prize, but you will have the satisfaction of having made some contribution to the common welfare.

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In localities where cottontails are sufficiently abundant to be a continual menace, the safest and most nearly permanent method of securing immunity from their ravages is to fence against them.  It has been found that woven wire netting of one and one-half inch mesh and thirty inches high will exclude rabbits, provided, that the lower border of the fence is buried five or six inches below the surface of the ground.  In cases where a small number of trees are concerned, a cylinder of similar wire netting around each tree, if so fastened that it cannot be pushed up close against the tree, serves the purpose more economically.

Standardizing Minnesota Potatoes.

A. W. AAMODT, UNIVERSITY FARM, ST. PAUL.

(Gideon Memorial Contest.)

The potato is one of the large farm crops of the country, rating next to the cereals in importance.  According to the census report of 1909, United States produced 389,194,965 bushels, and three-fourths of these were consumed in the states in which they were produced.  The report also shows that the most extensive production was along the northern tier of states, from Maine to Minnesota.  In 1909 the states ranked in production as follows:  New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois and Colorado.  In the same year Minnesota ranked fourth in surplus production, producing sixteen per cent. of the potatoes which entered into interstate commerce.  Wisconsin produced twenty per cent., Michigan twenty-four per cent. and Maine twenty-five per cent.