578 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



These bushes were al once taken out and burned up, in order that 

 we might not propagate from them longer, but propagate only from 

 bushes like this. Thus we began propagating our bushes from strong 

 producing plaut.s. As the result of this selection, we have increased 

 our yield from an average of only one (juart from a type of bush 

 like this to an average of sixteen quarts from a bush of this type. 

 This is a principle of sixteen to one that beats William Jennings 

 Brvan's financial theorv of IG to 1 in silver and gold. 



By studying the productivity of the plant you can proi)agate from 

 the most productive plants, and increase your yield from fifty to 

 five hundred per cent. 



. Now, when we begin to study the tree from this standpoint there 

 is not a grower who cannot, in a few years, build up an orchard 

 that will be infinitely more profitable than it is to-day. Gentlemen, 

 one of the most important things to do in setting out a young or- 

 chard, is to study the trees in your neighborhood, or somewhere 

 else until you find those that have a given record of thirty, forty 

 or fifty years, and take your stock from them and put it on the North- 

 ern Spy, or the Greening, or the Talman Sweet, and you can in- 

 crease your orchard yield very perceptably. 



Now, there is another very important matter, and that is the 

 question of properly controlling the influences that interfere with 

 the vitality of the tree. That is the question of diseases and insects. 

 You can take the best bred tree, and reduce its ability to produce 

 by repeated injury through the different types of insects. We have 

 in our country gradually increasing number of insects, and they 

 are producing a most deleterious effect upon our trees. Insects 

 that are allowed year after year to denude the trees of their foliage, 

 will in time so reduce their vitality and ruin their constitution, that 

 we lose these important qualities in trees. My idea of spraying is 

 that it is not only to destroy insects, but to increase the produc- 

 tivity of the tree; not only to maintain high quality of fruit, but to 

 keep up the productivity of the tree. When you protect the tree 

 from injury you preserve the source of future increase. Given a 

 tree with strong vitality, strong constitutional vigor, and you can 

 transmit to other trees, the properties that influence their produc- 

 tion. 



Another point raised on this subject was: At that convention 

 the nurserymen said to me, we can't afford to grow trees on your 

 plan; it costs too much. If we take the buds from mature trees 

 they will fail to grow. That is true; buds from mature trees do 

 not grow so well. "But," I said, "I would rather pay you a dollar 

 for a tree grown after this fashion than take your trees grown from 

 the nursery buds at fifteen cents apiece, because I can gain time by 

 it." This point is disputed by some scientific men; they say it is a 

 question whether you can get fruit quicker by bud selection. I 

 have on my farm to-day some ten thousand trees manj^ bearing fruit, 

 and most of which were propagated along this line. I have pro- 

 duced Ehode Island Greening from trees that have been top-worked 

 with selected scions and which have produced half a bushel of ap- 

 ples to the tree at three years. Now, you all know that the Rhode 

 Island Greening is not an early bearer. It is usually seven or eight 

 years, sometimes longer, before it begins to produce, yet in three 



