270 Nebraska State Horticultural Society. 



My first effort consisted in planting the seeds of a whole barrel of 

 Yellow Belleflower apples, grown in a small orchard in Green Lake 

 County, Wisconsin; but ignorance of the prairie conditions west of 

 the Mississippi, caused a loss the first year of the whole 1,000 seedlings. 



My next planting thirty-six years ago was of a few seeds of the 

 Duchess of Oldenburg, a few of Baldwin and Lowell grown nine miles 

 north of Portage, Wisconsin; and some Pewaukee, Tolman Sweet 

 and Siberian seed grown at Fox Lake in the same state. This plant- 

 ing of American, Siberian, and Oldenburg apples was very instructive 

 along breeding lines. 



Out of this planting of the Oldenburg seed, came the Patten 

 Greening, which suffered less than any tree of the mother parent, 

 variety of any age on my grounds. 



The pollinating variety which without doubt was the Rhode 

 Island Greening, left its impress in form and tree, and leaves, and 

 form and color of fruit, far more than did the hardy Oldenburg. 



The Patten Greening today stands second in value to no apple- 

 for the whole state of Minnesota. 



Its superior hardiness, freedom from blight, and scab, and rust 

 of foliage, its early and remarkable bearing, its commercial and uni- 

 form size, and excellent culinary qualities, place it in the front rank 

 of all hardy varieties, and furnish a base for the scientific breeding of 

 the apple in the Northwest which exists in no other within my knowl' 

 edge. 



During all these years of experiments the conviction had been 

 deepening with me that out of our hardiest and best American apples 

 and Siberian crosses and the hardiest Russians would be bred the 

 future successful orchards of the Northwest. 



Acting upon this conviction I planted almost exclusively seed* 

 from know varieties and surroundings, keeping a record of their 

 parentage, and thus eliminating chance to the fullest extent possible, 

 so that, if anything of value appeared, its parentage would be surely 

 known on one side, and often could almost as surely be traced on the 

 other. 



Seeds were taken from a large number of varieties, and out of all 

 this work some surprising results have come. A noticeable feature in 

 seedling apples has generally been their smallness of size. But with 

 me, small size has been the exception. So much so that in a collec- 

 tion of 50 varieties, for size, color, and general appearance I could 

 nearly or quite duplicate any selection of that number from our old 

 lists. 



