By reason of numerous letters the past year my attention has been drawn to the consideration of varieties of fruits adapted to our extreme Northern civilized limits of population. Very few varieties of apples are found to be of sufficient hardihood to endure the great extreme of cold which the climate occasionally exhibits. Seasons when the thermometer falls to 36° or 40° below zero are found to destroy the life of nearly all of our cultivated varieties of the apple. The Duchess of Oldenburg and Tetofsky, so far as I can learn, prove the most hardy of any of our foreign varieties, while the Gilpin and Jonathan are among the next hardiest. Of the newer Russian varieties now being tested by Downing, Barry, and others, we of course as yet know nothing, but hope much, from the fact that many of them originated in very high northern latitudes, and may be presumed to possess more than the usual amount of vitality and endurance. The different sorts of crabs, such as Hyslops, Transcendant, etc., etc., I believe all prove hardy in even the most northern cultivated limit; but the fruit, besides being only eatable where nothing else can be had, has also the failing of decaying early in autumn, and thus leaving the grower without apples of any sort for winter.

It is a desideratum, therefore, with those whose lot is cast amid the cold and inhospitable regions of the North, to procure even a second-rate fruit that will keep all the winter and at the same time a perfectly hardy tree. To this end it is desirable to note all the new native fruits of the Northwest, that from among them we may possibly find the one wanted. I have now before me as I write, March 28th, 1868, specimens of the Marengo Crab, sent by Charles Andrews, of Marengo, 111., and which he claims is perfectly hardy in the tree. The fruit is small, as my outline shows, but it is now perfectly sound, of a bright, handsome red color, and the flesh is yellowish, rather dry, but quite rich and quite good, as I have before said - when there is nothing besides it to be had. For those who live in regions where such varieties as the Jonathan, Fameuse, etc., can be grown and kept, this variety, except for cider or vinegar, is not worth ground room; but for the extreme north it may prove equally as valuable to residents there as the Shocklay, which is but little better, does to those of the Southern States. F. R. E.

Fig. 51.