For twenty-eight years he has been working on the Chinese sand pear and has brought out a race that is blight-proof, perfectly hardy and of good size and quality.  He is not yet satisfied, but has 5,000 cross-bred seedlings of many crosses that are about three feet high, ready for transplanting in orchard rows next spring—­and he has not room to set them.  The state of Iowa does not appreciate his labor or value the work he has done and is doing; they are not giving him the money or men to carry on this work.

Beside the pear experiments he has hundreds of crosses of apples that are very promising and just coming into bearing.  These are scattered all through that orchard of 7,000 trees, with the pears, and nearly as many plum crosses.  Some plums are heavily loaded this year that are of wonderful value, and one of the great points is that they have escaped the bad weather in blooming time, while all our standard varieties failed—­and I believe the hardiness of bloom will insure fruit on his best kinds when others fail in bad weather.

He is breeding form of tree in all these fruits—­see his paper in the last volume of Iowa Hort.  Report.  His crop of apples is light, but many crosses show some fruit.  Some pears and plums are loaded.  Eugene Secor says, “Patten is greater than Burbank.”

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WINDBREAKS ON FARM PAY DIVIDENDS.—­Windbreaks are usually more or less ornamental on a farm, and add to the contentment of the owner.  But it is not generally known that windbreaks actually pay dividends.  At least studies made a few years ago in Nebraska and Kansas indicate that windbreaks are profitable.  The state forester will soon study their influence in this state.  It must be admitted that windbreaks occupy space that could be profitably devoted to agricultural crops, and that the roots of the trees and their shade render a strip of ground on either side of the windbreak relatively unproductive.  Yet in spite of these drawbacks, efficient windbreaks undoubtedly do more good than evil.

The windbreak reduces the velocity of the wind, and, consequently, the loss of soil water from evaporation from the soil surface and from the field crops.  This is equivalent to additional rainfall, just as “a dollar saved is a dollar made.”  It seems from investigations made by the United States Forest Service that the greater yield of field crops and apples behind the protection of a good windbreak is enough to warrant every farmer in the prairie states in planting windbreaks.—­W.J.  Morrill, Colo.  Agri.  College.

MIDSUMMER REPORTS, 1916.

Collegeville Trial Station.

REV.  JOHN B. KATZNER, SUPT.