Addresses — Varities of Apples. 201 



only early apples from the seed of early ones. At the outset we 

 don't expect every seedling will prove perfectly hardy and of the 

 best quality of fruit, but expect again — some ironclads in tree, 

 with first-class fruit. 



The process by which to attain the hoped-for results, you see, is 

 through the natural flow of pollen, a hardy variety so instilling its 

 nature into the seed of the less hardy long-keepers as to make the 

 forthcoming seedling as hardy as a crab. For we find that the 

 common apple has the same influence on the crab that the crab has 

 on the common apple, each through their pollen reproducing them- 

 selves in the seedlings of the other. Thus from the same lot of 

 crab seed, grown in close proximity to tender varieties of large 

 apples, we find some of the trees prove tender, though perfect crab 

 in form of tree, while in others the tender variety reproduced itself 

 in the outward form of the tree and in the size of the fruit, yet 

 the tree in constitution and quality of fruit is a perfect crab. And 

 thus through various crosses we were enabled to solve the problem 

 as to how we can get a first class of apples in succession the 

 year through. We find in our crossbred seedlings the range of 

 deviation to be almost boundless, no two alike in tree and fruit, 

 and no two alike in size, color, form, season and quality of fruit, 

 so that every tree is a distinct variety; only in one instance did 

 a seed reproduce the parent in all particulars, and that was a 

 cherry crab. 



The nearest we find an approach to a fixed law in the reproduc- 

 tion from seed is in the time of ripening, the parent apple from 

 which the seed was taken governing the season. And therefore, 

 in the management of the state experimental orchard, we insert no 

 variety, late or early, but of best quality, thereby avoiding all 

 chances of deterioration in quality of fruit, and at the same time 

 and by the same means hope to combine in one apple more good 

 qualities than have been yet attained; for such a seed-growing 

 orchard as we have inaugurated was never before set in motion. 



We set alternately in row, a tree of a hardy variety and a long 

 keeper; the long-keeper not being perfectly hardy, we top-graft 

 with our hardy seedlings, which mature their wood and stop their 

 sap flow early, thereby compelling the artificial late growing variety 

 on top to ripen up for winter. Yet it is not every variety that can 

 by this process be made hardy enough to withstand our most 



