Missouri river, and their quality is almost beyond computation. The most of them possess very fine refractory properties. Fire rock has also been found in abundance, some of the silicious beds of the coal measures being very refractory.

In addition to the foregoing large quantities of glass is manufactured from the deposits of kaolin in the eastern part of the State, and potters' clays, limestones, marble, tin, nickel, manganese, cobalt and paints are found in paying quantities.

Missouri's greatest wealth lies beneath her soil and locked up in her hills and mountains. In manufacturing, Missouri should rival Pennsylvania, and should be a wealthier and greater State because of its greater agricultural resources.

AS TO FRUIT.

A

S a fruit State Missouri stands without a parallel. California is justly

celebrated in this respect, but the value of the fruit crop of Missouri annually exceeds that of California. It is not given to the production of one kind of fruit, but all varieties flourish equally well. The apple is as much at home here as in New York State, and the peach is not surpassed even by Delaware's celebrated product. Her vineyards and their products in quantity and quality can compete with the world.

The latitude of Missouri, between the 36th and 40th parallels is better adapted for successful fruit growing than is the country either north or south of it. Here peaches flourish as they do in few of the Northern States, while many tender fruits, such as apricots, nectarines, figs and many of the choicer varieties of grapes can be grown with ordinary care, and the fruits of the North, apples, pears, plums and cherries, grow here equally well with very much less trouble and care, all the labor of protecting the trees from the biting frost of a long cold winter being quite unnecessary, as the winters are so much shorter and less severe than the New England season of frost and snow.

Fruit culture in Missouri is still in its infancy; yet great progress has been already made. None of the catalogue of fruits adapted to this lati

tude fail of success in this State. Every owner of a lot of ground in almost every portion of the State can, with a small outlay of money and labor. raise all the fruit required for family consumption, from the strawberry and early cherry to the late keeping apple, and thousands of acres could, with a reasonable amount of labor properly bestowed, be converted into fine fruit gardens and orchards. The adaptation and capacity of Missouri to produce fruit for market and for transportation are unsurpassed. There is no question of the profit of raising apples for market, if a proper location is selected, good varieties planted, and reasonable care bestowed on the trees and on the fruit after it is gathered.

Where other fruits grow so finely, apples, of all fruits the most interesting to settlers, cannot fail to succeed. The apples of Missouri are of remarkably fine color and size and many varieties flourish here so much better than in the East, that Eastern fruit growers often fail to recognize varieties with which they have had life long acquaintance, when Missouri calls their attention to improved and enlarged editions of the old time sorts. To locate the most favorable district for apple culture would be impossible. Those who have visited nearly every part of the State and made extensive observations among our fruit growers say they have yet to learn of a single orchard, with even the let-alone cultivation so common in the West, which has not been a source of profit to the owner. Pears do well throughout the State, especially in the region of Clay, Jackson and Cass counties. The tree attains a great size and age-a diameter of from twelve to fifteen inches is common-and the fruit is borne in great profusion and is very luscious.

The Southeastern portion of the State, along the line of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railway, and in the western and southern portion where the marly deposits are so rich and extensive, are preeminently the peach districts, and in these regions the peach seems almost indigenous, never failing to produce most abundant crops; and yet fruit growers of these districts say they are unable to supply the demand from Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, and from the great fruit market of St. Louis. Peaches may be relied upon as a profitable and sure crop in all that part of the State south of the Missouri river, and they are also successfully grown in the northern division of the State.

But it is as a grape growing State that Missouri ranks above all others. Other States may compete with her in other fruits, but in grape culture she is the acknowledged leader, and Missouri grape growers have done

great success with the result of adding several valuable varieties to the list of standard grapes. These have an excellent adaptation to wine making. Missouri has originated more new varieties than any other

more to advance this branch of horticulture in the United States than those of all other States combined. Missouri is the native habitat of the grape. Wild vines grow to great dimensions, sometimes reaching ten and twelve inches in diameter. Some of these have been cultivated with

State and that her wines are of superior quality is attested by the fact that since its advent as a wine-making State, Missouri wines have received the highest awards at every world's fair.

The native varieties of grapes while producing the best quality of clarets, Burgundies and sherries, are free from the grape blight, known as phylloxera, which has been so disastrous to the wine interests of France and lately has invaded California. There is consequently a great demand for cullings from Missouri vines, which has been a source of revenue to the vinters of the State. The material is in Missouri to-day to compete with France and Burgundy in their choicest red wines and with the Rhine and Moselle in their best hocks.

While therefore the prospects of Missouri grape growers rest upon a surer basis than ever before, while the American grape grower feels assured of a grand success, the prospects of France, Germany, and in short all the grape-growing districts of Europe, are darkening. The shortage in the annual vintage increases with each year while the demand is steadily on the increase. The demand must be met. The wine growers of Europe must leave their devastated and uncertain vineyards. Let them bring their skill and industry here and supply the demand that the failing vineyards are sure to create. There are millions and millions of acres of land in this State that can produce the wines. Men who are willing to work and wait a few years for the results of their labor are wanted; men who have sense, skill and industry enough to profit by the experience of those who have worked before them, who can adapt themselves to the different requirements of this climate.

While possessing the natural advantages of soil and climate, there is still another advantage in fruit 'growing which Missouri possesses and that is a market near to home for all she can raise. It is located farthest to the westward of all the fruit States east of the Rocky Mountains. The States west with their hot dry climate, in which it is impossible to grow perfect fruit, stand ready to absorb the supply before it can reach the mining regions of the Rocky Mountains, where the demand for fruit is so great that it would consume the whole production were the State planted in one vast orchard and still ask for more.

There are few parts of this great State from which fruit cannot find direct and convenient transportation to a market which is never overstocked. All roads lead to St. Louis which is the greatesl fruit market of the West. Then in later years there have sprung up on the west, the

great consuming centers of Kansas City and St. Joseph, which annually require a great and ever increasing supply. Besides these mammoth market places, the fruit growers of Missouri can ship their surplus to Iowa, Minnesota and Dakota where there is growing up an enormous demand for it. A great population is growing up in the western fruitless region which must be supplied and Missouri will always have the advantage of location in meeting the demand from this source. From the western portion of the State there are direct lines of transportation to the mines in the West, and the southern and southeastern sections have their capacity taxed to the utmost, to supply the needs of Texas and the rapidly growing Southwest which part of the country is reached by the Iron Mountain route.

All these can be safely sent hundreds of miles to market and the great network of railroads radiating from St. Louis, and permeating the country in every direction, enables the fruit growers of Missouri to sell their products to the inhabitants of all that vast money-making, non-fruitgrowing, but fruit-consuming country extending westward to the Rocky Mountains, and from British America to Mexico, and to find a profitable market in the States north, northwest and northeast of them.

Perhaps no better proof can be given of the grand excellence of Missouri fruits than the fact that at several late meetings of the American Pomological Society, medals were awarded to Missouri for the best display of apples, pears and wines, and also for the best general display of fruits, gaining these honors when in competition with every State in the Union, represented by their choicest fruits. One of these meetings was held at Rochester, N. Y., which has long been regarded as the very center of the fruit growing interests of the country. At the St. Louis Exposition in the fall of 1888, the Southwest Missouri Immigration Society had an exhibit of apples that surpassed anything ever gotten together for a local display.