Addresses — Varities op Apples. 199" 



does not deal honorably and squarely in that direction, he should be 

 exposed and the people should know it. 



Mr. Gideon — I was just going to remark that in sending out a 

 list of trees that would succeed, or are succeeding in Wisconsin, in 

 order to guard tree planters against imposition, it would be well to 

 attach the price to them, because these tree-peddlers would then 

 sell nothing but the trees recommended; but to attach the usual 

 nursery price to them would kill the peddlers, because they sell' 

 them at from two to ten times the usual prices. 



PROPAGATION OF NEW AND HARDY VARIETIES OF 



APPLES. 



PETER M. GIDEON, Excelsior, Minn. 



Mr. President and Brother Fruit- Growers: By request of 

 your honorable secretary, Mr. Case, I herewith submit a report of 

 my experience in fruit culture, and especially in regard to the pro- 

 duction of new varieties; and to that end will confine my remarks 

 to the last twenty-five years, beginning with my efforts in Minne- 

 sota. My first attempts at fruit culture in Minnesota began 

 twenty-five years ago by the setting of 450 trees in an orchard, con- 

 sisting of thirty varieties of apples, a good assortment each of pears, 

 plums, cherries and quinces, with the planting of one bushel of 

 apple seed and one peck of peach stones; and each year thereafter 

 for eleven years, planted eastern and southern apple seed, and never 

 less than to grow a thousand trees; and to-day but three trees 

 remain. The grasshoppers of twenty-two years ago killed many, 

 and later the leaf-lice killed some and the blight more: but the great 

 mass of ruin came from the extremes of climate. Nor were the first 

 setting and the seedlings all I set and lost during that space of 

 time; hundreds were obtained of various ones, but all went in the 

 common ruin. One of the three left has been top-grafted with a 

 better variety; both the others have been girdled by the blight 

 and the entire top taken off, but have sprouted and will again 

 make good trees. 



But since the first twelve years I have planted only homegrown. 

 Seed, with results that would encourage the most desponding. The 



