Winter Meeting. li)5 



thirty years ago we had men Uving up in Northern Iowa that we used 

 to say to them, you will never grow any apples up there and laugh at 

 their feeble efforts, but I want to say we can't laugh at them today. 

 They are outranking us in Southwestern Iowa now. That man, C. G. 

 Payne of Charles City, Iowa, has moved the apple belt three hundred 

 miles north. He said to us thirty years ago he would do it. He has 

 done it by a scientific crossing of hardy varieties and growing seedlings 

 there under the conditions that prevail in Northeastern Iowa within 

 thirty miles of the Minnesota line. He has produced a number of very 

 valuable hardy seedling apples of high quality and good lookers, and 

 they are growing profitable orchards to-day in Northern Iowa, and 

 shipping car loads of apples to market, and we laughed at their efforts 

 thirty years ago. It just shows what the gentleman remarked awhile 

 ago — common sense appHed to the conditions that prevailed in that 

 cold, bleak, treeless country thirty years ago. And further north in 

 Minnesota they are producing an abundance of good varieties of winter 

 apples that are hardy in that climate. It is surprising the progress 

 that horticulture and pomology has made in the upper Mississippi valley. 

 We used to envy you Missouri and Kansas people with you wonderful 

 production of apples and the way you grew them commercially, but 

 I think by and by you will envy Northern Iowa and Minnesota. We are 

 producing fruit up there that is astonishing, by this persistent applica- 

 tion of common sense. 



A question : What about the Wealthy apple ? 



The Wealthy apple is the king of all apples in that region. It is a 

 cold storage apple. It is in my experience and observation the best 

 cold storage apple that I have ever seen. No man that knows the Weal- 

 thy as it grows north will question the quality of it. It is very produc- 

 tive. It is hardy, it is desirable in every respect, only it is a fall apple, 

 or in Minnesota it is an early winter apple, but in Iowa it can be put in 

 cold storage very profitably. Mr. Haviland of Fort Dodge has a very 

 large orchard, and has made as much money perhaps as any other man 

 orcharding in Iowa, in proportion to the number of acres planted. 



Major Holsinger. — Is it a fact, or not a fact, that the most of 

 your good varieties are accidental seedlings? 



No, I think not. Major. It is true to some extent, but hardly the 

 leading varieties. I will answer you by saying, but very few of them. 

 In fact the Wealthy is really an accidental seedling, and a number of 

 others, the most of our productions have been brought about by scien- 

 tific work in the experimental stations of Iowa; some nine or ten of 

 them under the auspices of the State Horticultural Society, and are 

 supported by large appropriations from our state legislature for that 



