ILLINOIS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 2oe5 



fruit (earliness or lateness,) flavor of fruit, and productiveness, meet 

 our requirements. 



A jar of glass or a paper bag should be placed over a spur or group 

 of spurs of the male parent tree just before the flowers come to perfec- 

 tion, (just as they are opening). Then a spur of the female parent tree 

 which the jar or bag will go over should have the anthers removed from 

 the flowers before they are fully open and early in the morning. The jar 

 or bag which should have covered the spur, it was on over night, should 

 then be taken together with the spur in it, and put over tht spur from 

 which the pollen sacks have been removed a few minutes before. Close 

 up the jar or bag, and as soon as the dew has dried from the leaves, 

 disturb or shake the jar or bag and it is all done. 



I must tell you of an experiment I tried in the year eighteen hund- 

 red and fifty-seven. In eighteen hundred and fifty-six we had a very 

 large crop of fruit of all kinds in our garden of one acre ; twenty varie- 

 ties of apples, eleven of pears, forty-two of plums, one of apricots, one 

 of quinces, three of grapes, one of peaches, three of crab (Siberian) apples. 

 The winter following was as hard or harder than the present one. All 

 the tender varieties died, and the idea struck me that as those varieties 

 which were not hurt by the severe winter must be the hardiest, I had 

 better save seeds in hopes of getting hardy seedlings. 



I had three Westfield Seek-no-Farther in one row ; beside the first 

 tree on the east (twenty-two feet away) was a sweet seedling, bearing 

 fruit of fair size and good keeping qualities. This last tree bloomed 

 very profusely. On the north was a Golden Crab, on the west a Bald- 

 win, and in the next row (west) a Dominie (forty-four feet away), and 

 on the south another Westfield Seek-no-Farther. The Baldwin died 

 in the spring, so it did not blossom. 



Thus the trees on each of the four sides were of different varieties. 

 I saved tlie seeds which came out of one of the nicest of the Seek-no- 

 Farther apples. It had eleven seeds which appeared good, and from 

 these I raised nine yearling trees which I set out in my orchard in 

 eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. 



They have all borne fruit tor four or five years. Seven of them are 

 sweet apples (good keepers), but of no account, as they are loo small. 



One is part crab (Siberian). The be^t one of the lot is a fair sized 

 fruit and resembles the Dominie in shape, and in form of calyx is just 

 like it, in flavor not quite so acid,- but the flesh is more yellow, quite 

 firm, sprightly and crisp, keeps about the same as Dominie. So out of 

 the seeds uf one apple from which T have nine bearing trees, seven I 

 know had the seedling sweet ai»plc for their male parent, one was sired 

 by the crab, and one by the D(miinie, and none of them are true Seek- 

 no-Farther like the mother tree, although the tree at the south was of 

 that variety. This case shows me that seedlings are made up of their 

 parents, but, though other pollen is plenty so that other seeds growing in 

 the same capsule may have been fertilized from other trees, only the 

 pollen from one variety can act upon a stigma so as to fertilize a seed. 



