STATE HOETICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 7 



sickly for want of sunlight and air. Are they not the ones that are 

 mainly taken there? 



Why not plant little green potatoes? Why go through the 

 corn hunting the finest ears? Why take the fairest fruit of the vine 

 from which to obtain seed to propagate their kind, and ignore the 

 very law of nature which ca^ises us to do it when selecting fruit 

 from which to obtain seed to build our orchards on? 



We may work and double work,- cross the ocean, and search in 

 every land an ironclad to find — could one be found — bouncj in 

 triple bands of steel. This wholesale poisoning at the fountain 

 head would, in time, burst the bars and assert itself. 



J. V. Cotta, in the discussion which followed the reading of 

 those essays, said : " Last year Mr. Vaughan was pitted against me 

 on top working. Now, in our commercial nurseries, all the apple 

 seeds come from the cider mills." We can only get hardy trees by 

 getting hardy stocks, " it makes little or no difference as to the 

 root." 



Mr. .J. A. Spear says: " I give no care to the root!" 



There is not a shadow of doubt but that those men are honest 

 in their views, but in going to the cider mills for their seed they 

 ignore the law of hereditary descent, which, unfortunately, the 

 whole human race has given too little heed to. 



The scientists of to-day believe that vegetable and animal life 

 are so closely allied that the same law of nature to which one must 

 bow the other will have to obey. But the masses, who pay so little 

 regard to the transmission of their own defects, will be slow to be- 

 lieve it possible in vegetable life. 



I as firmly believe that obtaining seed from cider mills lies at 

 the base of the cause of the short lives and unfruitfulness of our 

 trees as that the earth is lighted up by the sun. I am borne out in 

 this by some of the illustrious men who have "gone before." 



Barry, in his "Fruit Garden," published in 1858, pages 60 and 

 61, uses the following language : " It scarcel}' admits of a doubt but 

 that the greater part of the difiiculties met with in fruit-tree culture, 

 as maladies of various sorts, unfruitfulness, etc., are induced by care- 

 less and an undiscriminating system of propagation. The stock has 

 a most important influence on the health, longevity, fruitfulness and 

 symmetry of trees. And it does not seem possible that our indis- 

 criminate mode of saving seed for stock is at all consistent with 

 rational, intelligent culture." But he seems to have indulged in the 

 hope that the danger would soon pass, for he adds: " A discrim- 

 inating spirit is already becoming apparent among the best classes of 

 cultivators, and their example will soon be felt." Has that hope been 

 realized? Let our dead orchards and faded hopes answer. 



0. B. Galusha, in his address as president, gave utterance to 

 the following pointed sentences, — page 740 of " Horticultural 



