Wintei' Meeting. 325 



belonged to a long lived family; not to the fact that he used tobacco. 

 I know another man in Illinois, who comes of a family of consumptives. 

 Realizing his danger from this malady, he has all his life taken morn- 

 ing walks and regular exercise in the open air. He still lives, at the 

 age of nearly ninety. His continued good health is due to his sys- 

 tematic habits of life, the regular care he has given his body. These 

 cases illustrate the two standpoints from which we may consider the 

 longevity of our trees. 



It has been claimed that our apple tiees in the west are short 

 lived. I am not prepared to dispute this statement. Their short life 

 may be no doubt partly due to the fact that we are in a new country, 

 and have not yet had time to adapt our trees to longevity in this climate 

 by originating and acclimatizing varieties. We are depending mainly 

 upon varieties originated elsewhere. Those sorts which are the longest 

 lived under other climatic conditions might not be long lived here, 

 just as our commercial varieties, so large and productive here are not 

 large and productive in some other orchard regions. In a trip to 

 southeast Missouri this summer I saw some apple trees that were 

 seventy years old and as large and productive as any I have ever seen. 

 This indicates that some varieties are long lived in Missouri. 



The demand for early bearing varieties has been greater than the 

 ■demand for long lived ones. "With the hurry for wealth, and constant 

 rapid change which characterizes our western conditions, men plant 

 Ben Davis, Missouri Pippin and Jonathan, which come into profitable 

 l^earing at from three to five years, without stopping to inquire whether 

 some other, later maturing sort might be in its period of most profitable 

 fruiting after these early bearing sorts are dead and gone. It is quite 

 probable that there are in existence many sorts that would outlive the 

 varieties commonly planted here, and it is possible that some of these 

 varieties would be commercially profitable if we cared to wait ten or 

 twenty years for them to come into their best fruiting period. On 

 the Experiment Station grounds there are numerous varieties that have 

 grown for ten to twenty years without giving any evidence of fruitful- 

 ness. Every year we are surprised by some of these sorts suddenly 

 beginning to bear and I shall not be amazed if many of them prove to 

 produce to a good old age. 



