BREEDING APPLES. 65 



Records can be kept of the crosses made, and, plants from each cross 

 having been tested, the results can be compared, and thus those 

 crosses which have given the largest proportion of useful varieties can 

 be known, so as to use them more extensively in future hybridizing. 



The individual seed and the tree springing from it being the unit 

 of the entire variety, each individual api)le plant shovild be given a 

 number, and notes should be recorded for each tree from its birth to 

 its rejection, or until its selection as the mother of a variety for 

 dissemination. 



Each variety used as the parent of a hybrid ma}'^ be considered as 

 one plant, since all came from a single seed. If from Wealthy- 

 Oldenburg hybrids made in large numbers there resulted wonderful 

 variation with many trees producing good apples, all of which mature 

 in autumn, we would expect further breeding of this cross to pro- 

 duce mainly varieties which would not keep in winter. If hybridizing 

 Rhode Island Greening-Oldenburg produced mostlj' winter keepers, 

 even though only a small percentage of good ones resulted, we should 

 look more to this combination to produce the loug-wished-for hard}'^ 

 varieties of winter keepers which are needed to push the winter-apple 

 zone northward. The characteristics of individual trees of the " fra- 

 ternity^" group designated in this article as the "centgener" should, 

 so far as practicable, be recorded in numerical averages, that one 

 cross may be compared with another. ' Not onl}' will our experimen- 

 ters be able thus to learn which varieties are best to cross, but the 

 more careful work will result in a better knowledge of the best ways 

 of breeding apples. 



HOW TO HYBRIDIZE APPLES. 



There is such a multiplicity of conditions for which varieties of 

 apples are desired that the work of variety formation of apples is 

 lai'gely creative. The Minnesota Horticultural Society offers a pre- 

 mium of $1,000 to the originator of an apple as hardy and productive 

 as the Oldenburg, equal to the Wealthy in size and flavor, and to the 

 Malinda in keeping quality. A permanent committee, with Prof. 

 S. B. Green, of St. Anthony Park, Minn., as chairman, has charge of 

 the awards. 



Prof. N. E. Hansen, of the South Dakota Agricultural College, says: 



The Northwest at present needs varieties of applies combiniiif? the hardiness and 

 freeilom from scab of the best Russian varieties with the choi( e iinality and loug- 

 keepiiig rapacity of our l^est American winter varieties. A variety as hardy and 

 large as Hihernal, as choice in quality as Northern Spy, and as long a keeper as 

 Ben Davis or Roraanite would be worth millions of dollars to the prairie 

 Northwest. 



Professor Hansen is crossing and hybridizing these types and other 

 American and Russian varieties, as Siberian and hybrid Siberian 



23207— No. 29—01 5 



