[Illustration:  A veteran white spruce at Mr. Cook’s place.]

[Illustration:  Specimen Colorado blue spruce at Dewain Cook’s.]

We have to report a grand success with everbearing strawberry No. 1017, sent to this station from our State Fruit-Breeding Farm last spring.  The season all through was favorable for that class of fruit.  We kept all blossoms picked off till about the first of August, when we let everything grow, and there is a great number of new plants.  These new plants, with a few exceptions, did not bear, but the old plants, the ones set last spring, we gathered from them, from about September 15 till the first hard frost, October 5th, a liberal crop of surprisingly fine fruit.  The Americus, also an everbearing variety, treated exactly as we did Minnesota 1017, bore a great number of plants and some fruit in the fall.  The berries were not so large as the 1017 nor so many of them.  While it is a perfect flowering variety, most of the late blossoms blighted, which seems to be a weakness of this variety.

On November 5th our strawberry beds were all given a mulching with loose oat straw for a winter protection.

The several varieties of grape vines originating at the Minnesota State Farm on trial here have all made a vigorous growth.  We have them all pruned and laid on the ground, and we intend to give them no other winter protection.  They are in a sheltered location.  In spite of the various freezes early in the season we got samples of fruit from most of the varieties.  Minnesota No. 8 seems to be the earliest to ripen its fruit.  The wild grape flavor is noticeable in all these varieties.

The various varieties of plum trees sent here from the State Farm made vigorous growth the past season and are looking healthy with the exception of Minnesota No. 21.  Of the five trees of this variety each one has a great many galls on the body of the tree.  It is probably what is termed black knot, only the galls have not turned black yet.  They are apparently of too recent growth for that.  It is probable that we will plant other trees in their places next spring.

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PAINTING OF SMALL TREE WOUNDS USELESS.—­It has long been the custom for horticulturists to recommend, and fruit growers to use, dressings of various kinds on the wounds of trees when branches are removed in pruning.  A few years ago the New York Experiment Station decided to conduct some experiments to determine whether such practice was really of any value or not.

From results of this work, which have recently been published in bulletin form, it is concluded that the use of white lead, white zinc, yellow ochre, coal tar, shellac and avenarious carbolineum as coverings for wounds under five inches in diameter is not only useless, but usually detrimental to the tree.  This is particularly true of peaches, and perhaps of some other stone fruits, which, according to recommendations, should never be treated at all.