Dr. Halsted's notes (May American Garden) on the condition of peach buds in New Jersey are suggestive. We also were favored with Italian-like weather up to the last days of February, when it was followed by a number of days of very low temperature with dry westerly winds. The buds of our hardy peaches, of Prunus Simoni, Prunus virgata, the Japan plums, and other plants from less rigorous climes, were started, and utterly killed by the sudden change. Though the buds of Prunus Maacki, Prunus triloba, the common lilac, and other plants from Siberia, the valley of the Amur, and northwestern China, twere started still more, yet they came through the 250 below zero weather without apparent injury.

This seems to prove that even the unfolding buds of some hardy plants are capable of enduring extremes of temperature which will kill even the dormant fruit buds of the peach, and many other less hardy plants. Even when fully expanded, some of the plants of the Amur will endure a freeze that would destroy the half opened buds of even our native plums. As an instance: three years ago our plants of Prunus Siberica, or Russian apricot, were in full bloom the last of March, and were subjected to a frost that formed ice in a watering trough near them, nearly half an inch thick; yet not a flower was injured, and we grew hundreds of seedlings from the almonds that matured. In like manner, the foliage and nearly expanded fruit buds of Prunus Maacki have been severely frozen without show of injury, when the starting foliage and buds of even the native willows were blackened. This gives us a hint that we may yet secure varieties of the peach, almond, and possibly other fruits, from the home of Prunus Maacki and the Amur almond, which will endure a low temperature when the buds are started.

In the last letter received from the lamented Charles Gibb, when in northwest China, he stated that peaches and apricots were really grown in Mongolia and the valley of the Amur, and that he would devise means for obtaining them.

To a great extent, the fruit trees and shrubs we have on trial from the interior provinces of Russia and north central Asia, are provided with very hardy fruit buds and blossoms. It has long been known that the half or fully expanded blossom of the Oldenburg apple would safely pass through frosts or bad weather that would ruin those of most of our fruits of west European origin, and we now find that dozens of varieties from its home on the Volga will endure as much and some even more.

The cherries, plums and pears of the interior steppe of Russia we find have equally hardy buds and blossoms. As an instance : in the spring of 1888 we had a very heavy frost, when our native plums, the Richmond cherry, and a number of the Russian cherries were in blossom or the buds nearly open. The native plums were nearly all ruined, and there were no Early Richmond or other common cherries grown in the state; yet some of our Russians were well loaded with fruit.

So far, it appears to me, too little attentfon has been given to the relative hardiness and perfection of the blossoms of our fruit trees and shrubs. Aside from the question of relative hardiness, close observation has shown that many of the cultivated varieties have defec-tive blossoms. The Rogers' hybrid, and some other grapes, we find have little, if any, perfect pollen, and are barren unless intermingled with those possessing perfect flowers, and the same is true of some of our raspberries, plums and apples. Again, some of our plums and other fruits have apparently perfect blossoms, yet they fail in ourclimate to be self-fertilizing, as the pollen is ripened and wasted before the stigma is ready to receive it. I hope that able observers and experimenters will give more attention to the subject than has been given in the past.

The past unusual winter gave us a good opportunity for the selection of trees and plants that winter well. While many of the half-hardy and really hardy plants were well started when the cold wave struck us, we found dozens of our native trees and shrubs, and dozens of varieties of apples, pears, cherries, plums, and all other trees and shrubs from east Europe and north central Asia, with buds as perfectly dormant as they were in November. As a rule, these are the truly hardy trees in wood, bud and blossom ; yet, as stated, many plants that hibernate less perfectly than the peach, we must still retain in our hardy list as exceptions to a general rule.

Iowa Agricultural College. J. L. Budd.