[Illustration:  A two-acre field of Dunlap strawberries on place of A. W. Richardson, at Howard Lake.]

Mr. Ludlow:  I would like to know what you advise for that commercial orchard, what varieties?

Mr. Richardson:  Wealthys, all the time. (Applause.)

Mr. Ludlow:  I would like to ask for the comparative prices you received for the three apples you mentioned, Wealthy, Greening and Hibernal.

Mr. Richardson:  The Hibernal sold for around $3.00 a barrel and the Wealthy sold for three something.  Mind you, I never sold apples at all until this year to Minneapolis markets.  I can sell all the apples I can grow myself without any trouble if I have the proper men to pick them and pack them at home.  I had a son that was doing that until a few years ago, and he followed my instructions and would place nothing but first class stuff in the barrels and would sell my samples without any trouble and get the top market price.  I run across down in my cellar some of last year’s crop of Northwest Greenings, just two of them left, one of them partially decayed.  Something I never had known to happen before.  They lay in the cellar just wrapped up.

Mr. Ludlow:  It wasn’t embalmed?

Mr. Richardson:  No, sir.  Gentlemen, you need not be afraid of growing fruit in Minnesota.

Mr. Ludlow:  What peculiar method have you for keeping those apples?

Mr. Richardson:  Just wrapped in paper only.

The President:  What temperature do you keep in your cellar?

Mr. Richardson:  40 degrees about this time.

The President:  You have a heater in your cellar?

Mr. Richardson:  Yes, sir, but this is shut off from that, though the pipes run through.

A Member:  Are your trees still as far apart as they were at first?

Mr. Richardson:  No, sir.  I neglected to say that I sent East and got some roots, and I was advised to set them out between.  I have part of my orchard set 15x16, but that is too close together.

A Member:  If you were going to do it again would you put them 30x30?

Mr. Richardson:  20x20, that is, Wealthys, particularly.  Of course, for the Hibernals, you got to put them farther apart.

A Member:  You mentioned the Delicious.  What is your opinion of the
Delicious?

Mr. Richardson:  My experience has been so little with them.  I have about 150 Jonathan trees coming on that will be all right.

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MARBLE PILLAR TO FAMOUS MCINTOSH TREE.—­Perhaps one of the most curious monuments in existence has recently been built in Ontario by Canadians.  The farmers have just erected a marble pillar to mark the site on which grew a famous apple tree.

More than a century ago a settler in Canada named McIntosh, when clearing a space in which to make a home in the wilderness, discovered among a number of wild apple trees one which bore fruit so well that he cultivated it and named it McIntosh Red.