EFFORTS TO INCREASE FOOD RESOURCES 



Out in the West there is an apple that seldom fails to 

 bear a heavy crop. Heat and drought leave it unharmed. 

 The fruit hangs on in spite of prairie winds. In many- 

 places this Ben Davis is the only apple that can be success- 

 fully grown. To Beach, the Ben Davis seemed to have all 

 of the qualities that the Mcintosh lacked. In 1898 Ben 

 Davis buds were emasculated and covered with bags to 

 keep out the bees. A few days later, tiny pollen grains 

 carefully gathered from Mcintosh trees were placed on 

 the Ben Davis stigmas. From the resulting fruit, the black 

 seeds were taken and buried in moist sand over winter. 

 Planted in the spring the young seedlings were soon ready 

 to set in the trial rows. The Cortland tree at one time was 

 just one among hundreds of similar trees, without a name 

 or anything else to single it out from the many other off- 

 spring of the same parents .or from those of other parents. 

 No plant wizard saw the Cortland in its awkward stage 

 and said, "Here is a tree that will be grown by the mil- 

 lions." All it had was a metal tag to show that the seed 

 came from a Ben Davis tree and had been fertilized with 

 pollen from a Mcintosh. 



There are some varieties of apples that bear a basket of 

 fruit when three or four years old; but most varieties take 

 from five to eight years before producing any fruit at all, 

 and some of the finest varieties must have ten years or 

 more. This Cortland tree bore its first fruit in 1906, nine 

 years after the first pollination was made. At first it at- 

 tracted little attention, but by 1915 it had produced regular 

 crops of such excellent fruit that it was considered to 

 be the finest of the whole collection. After nine years of 

 careful observation, the Cortland was considered worthy 

 of testing by fruit growers. 



On the desk before me is a Cortland apple grown in 

 Litchfield County, Connecticut. Its rich red color tempts 

 me. Its fragrant aroma is the inspiration for these remarks; 



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