No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 577 



variety, but it does not produce well. It is not of vigorous stock, 

 is subject to canker, and the tree will pass out very readily. In 

 fifteen years you will have a very broken orchard of this variety. 

 Now, I believe it is possible to grow the King and the Spitzenberg 

 profitably. I think I have proved this fact. 



It is something more than twenty years ago that I began to ad- 

 vocate taking our scions from the strong, vigorous, more mature 

 trees. I advocated it at a Nurserymen's Convention, but not a 

 member of that Association accepted my theory. They said they 

 did not believe there was anything in it ; that a bud was a bud, and 

 would produce a tree. Now, that does not apply in stock breeding. 

 We know of instances where m:en have paid a hundred thousand 

 dollars for a stallion. Why? Because he was recognized as a most 

 valuable animal, and his prepotency was known. Now, this same 

 principle will apply in plant life, and starting on this plan, I began 

 to work it out. I choose as my first experiment, the King, because 

 of its high value. I selected first the buds from an ideal tree, a 

 King tree and top-worked Northern Spy trees ; you know that tree 

 is known and noted for its vigor. It has a good, strong root sys- 

 tem, and when you can get roots that will go down deep into the 

 soil and take strong hold, there you will have good and vigorous 

 trees. It is twenty-one years ago since I started this experiment on 

 my father's farm. He had planted the King trees, not one of which 

 is now left in this orchard in which I experimented, we have trees 

 that have been top-Avorked for twenty-one years; which show no 

 evidence of canker, and are producing from seven to nine barrels 

 of apples to the tree. Now, this is a wonderful record for the King; 

 it is a fine fruit, but not a heavy yieider and yet these trees show 

 every evidence of going right on and being profitable for a half 

 or three-quarters of a century more. Now, that is what I mean by 

 our propagating stock with greater care. I might mention one or 

 two others — the Talman SAveet (the wood is like steel), the Northern 

 Spy, the Northwestern Greening — are the same, so fine grained is the 

 wood, and so hard; you can use these safely to work the other va- 

 rieties on them. I believe in this way Ave can increase the yield 

 of apples in the United States at least fifty yer cent, in the next 

 twenty-five years, and produce fruit more abundantly that consum- 

 ers ought to able to have. 



One other point. For a number of years, I produced among my 

 trees large quantities of currants, but they were not satisfactory, 

 and I began to investigate why the yield of this fruit should be so 

 small, and I found that many of the largest appearing plants were 

 not producing anything at all. I can show you by the chart here. 



As the pickers came in one day, I discovered that a large number 

 of trays came in with very little fruit from their rows, and then, 

 again, other pickers came in with baskets filled in a very short time, 

 heaped up with beautiful fruit, Avhile it took the pickers in the thin 

 rows a long time. I began to investigate, and found that in these 

 thin rows bush after bush had no fruit upon them. They were 

 large bushes, but had nothing Avhatever upon them. Many of the 

 bushes were of this type — strong bushes, strong stem with perhaps 

 only a single currant upon them, while side by side Avith them, were 

 the bushes of this type — the bushes loaded from top to bottom. 

 37—7—1910 



