every sensible friend of the farmer and
his interests.

Next time Dio. proposes to call up a subject of much importance to
everybody, and one that badly needs ventilating.

DIO.

POSSIBILITIES OF CHERRY GROWING.

The insertion of one little word gives too unfavorable an idea of the
best varieties of the Griotte cherries, grown all over the interminable
steppes north and east of the Carpathian mountains in Europe.

As printed the paragraph reads: "Some of the thin-twigged Griottes, with
dark skins and colored juice, are as large as the Morello and nearly or
quite as sweet."

The copy reads--or should read--"as large as the English Morello and
nearly or quid sweet."

As you say my object in talking the matter up is the hope of interesting
some of the large nurserymen, like those at Bloomington, in the
desirable work of importing and propagating the Griottes, Amarells, and
the Asiatic sweet cherries known as "Spanish," of the East plain, on a
large scale.

Why should our Western propagators permit our importing of fruits,
ornamental trees and shrubs, to be done by the nurserymen of the Eastern
States.

If we turn to a good map of Europe we will see at a glance that the
importing of fruits so far has been from the west coast of France,
Belgium, and Holland, or from the south of England. As with our west
coast, this whole region has been made a land of verdure by the soft,
humid air of the Gulf stream. Tracing on the map the line of the
Carpathian and Caucasus mountains, we find three-fourths of all Europe,
north and east of these ranges, without a mountain or hill traced on the
great expanse except the Valdai hills, and these are only bluffs not as
high or extensive as those of our rivers and dividing ridges. It is the
greatest plain section of the world, and is the ancient home of the best
fruits of the temperate zones. Common sense should lead us to give trial
to the horticultural products of this plain. To find apples, pears,
cherries, and plums as hardy, and as well adapted to the hot summers and
cold winters of Illinois and Iowa as the Fameuse apple, we need not
enter the empire of Russia. Northeastern Austria has a variable summer
and winter climate, which will not permit the growing of apples of the
grade of hardiness of the Ben Davis, Stark, Jonathan, and Dominie; of
pears of the grade of Flemish Beauty, or of cherries of the grade of
Early Richmond as to foliage and ability to endure low te