SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 259 



in productiveness, which together with the go-as-you-please 

 system of the later planters, and a succession of unfavorable 

 seasons, is again causing the cry that you " can't grow fruit in 

 the West," and this brings us to the issue before us. Now, how 

 can we do better than to investigate the field of new fruits? 

 Every one will admit that there is a demand for fruits better 

 suited to our climate, in all the different species and kinds which 

 we try to grow, and we do but try, in a great measure, for our 

 failures are more numerous than our successes. 



If we look around at our orchards we shall see that a great 

 number of the kinds we have tried are found wanting. A few of 

 the varieties of forty or fifty years ago still give us a little fruit, 

 but orchards of that age are fast becoming numbered with the 

 past, and the few varieties that remain we do not consider good 

 enough or productive enough to be utilized by our present tree 

 planters. Of new apples how few there are that till a place in 

 our needs. 



Have Walbridge, or Pewaukee, or Wealthy, or any of the 

 newer apples that are before the public, come up to the expec- 

 tations of the planters? Of course the nurserymen trumpeted 

 their praise, but where are the great orchards, bending under 

 their loads of fruit that these "Climate-proof" sorts were to 

 produce? And when the whole parade of new apples shall have 

 been tried in the crucible, shall we have anything more reliable 

 than the Winter Pennock,Vandcvere Pippin, Yellow Belleflower 

 or Rawle's Janet? And if we do go over to the Russians we get 

 nothing better than the Willow Twig in quality, and not half so 

 good in tree, for if the winters do not kill them, the insinuating 

 blight does, so then in spite of all the hue and cry about all the 

 new and hardy varieties of apple, we are succeeding in bringing 

 forth failures as often as ever we did. I tell you the outlook of 

 the apple problem is not good, and unless something happens 

 we shall be obliged to import our apples from more favored 

 climes. It is not my intention to give anyone the " blues," but 

 let us open our eyes to the situation and make a beginning in the 

 direction of raising new sorts. 



Of course, anyone is ready to adopt any new fruit that is 

 brought and forced upon their attention, if they can be made to 

 see good in it. But did it ever occur to very many of our fruit 

 planters that perhaps they might be able to originate something 

 new in the way of new fruit themselves, for somebody else to 

 " catch on" to? Now that this can be done and how, I will try 

 to set forth : 



Take a bushel of Yellow Belleflower, or other good apples. I 

 mentioned the Yellow Belleflower from the fact that the flowers 

 are imperfect, or lack pollen under certain circumstances, and 

 consequently its seeds is more likely to be crossed with some 

 other sort, and consequently more likely to sport, as it is called, 



