Summer Meeting. 45 



orchard the more of siicli conditions you sec. Of course, there are 

 small areas that seem specially adapted to the apple where these condi- 

 tions do not prevail to so great an extent, but doubtless it is safe to say 

 that as a rule an orchard twenty years planted, unless it has been con- 

 tinually re-planted, has lost thirty per cent of its trees. There are a few 

 varieties that would live much longer, but we do not plant them because 

 they are not profitable. When we speak of apple orchards now a days, 

 we mean our leading commercial varieties, and as a rule they are short- 

 lived. It is a fact that the last seven or eight years have been unusually 

 severe on orchards, but are there not other causes for these troubles? 

 Has not the apple tree been gradually growing more short-lived, at 

 least during the last generation ? I am sure some of you older ones can 

 remember when orchards were more hardy than now. 



I do not believe we do right to lay all the blame to nature for this 

 trouble. Perhaps if nature had her way, we would have trees more 

 hardy than we have, with the misuse of all our science and skill. Sup- 

 pose we should do with our corn, wheat, etc., and all kinds of live stock 

 as we are doing with the apple. Suppose we should select the scrapings 

 of the corn crib and wheat bin for our seed, or the runtiest, scrubbiest of 

 our live stock to breed from? That is just what we are doing with 

 the apple. We go to the cider mill for our apple seed, where every- 

 thing is ground but good apples, and that is the foundation of all the 

 orchards of the present day. If you plant these seed and grow a given 

 number of seedlings, cultivate them in the nursery until three years old, 

 from forty to sixty per cent will be dead, and if left longer, more will 

 go. 



These, I say, are the foundation of our orchards. Is it any wonder 

 they are short-lived ? In the early settling of Missouri seedling orchards 

 were made. In fact, all of the first orchards were seedlings, but the 

 seed were selected (mostly in Kentucky) by hand from good apples. 

 They were left in the nursery until they were three years old, and what 

 were not dead were planted in orchards. This is why the orchards 

 were more healthy then than now. I have in mind an orchard in Clay 

 county that was made in this way, and when five or six years old was 

 grafted with scions brought from Kentucky in saddle pockets on horse- 

 back. 



This orchard was planted more than seventy years ago, and many 

 of the trees are yet healthy and vigorous and bearing good crops. I 

 believe orchards could be made now as healthy and as long-lived as they 

 were in those times if we would do as they did then. But do we ? Will 

 we? No, not yet. In this fast age, with the rush and push of the 



