Winter Meeting. 305 



small apple ma}' be of use. In Philadelphia, last January, I saw Lady 

 apples selling for 25 cents a quart for table decorations. This is a very 

 small apple of high color and superior excellence. High color is not 

 always essential. The dull colored Albemarle or Yellow Newton Pippin 

 has sold in London for $14 per barrel. We do not know the possibilities 

 of the species Pyrus Malus, or standard apple. Two might be named, 

 disease resistance and hardiness. As to hardiness, the apple should be 

 extended further north and further south than at present. It could be 

 extended north by crossing with Siberian crabs and southward by select- 

 ing heat-resistant seedlings, or find other stock of the apple native further 

 south. By De Candolle's law of hardiness we learn that wild plants 

 have not extended their natural Hmits one hundred miles north in his- 

 toric times. Is it then any wonder that the apple brought over by the 

 early settlers from the mild climate of France and Germany failed in 

 the prairie northwest. It was not until the Dushess of Oldenburg 

 and other apples native to the colder regions succeeded here that we 

 realized we could extend the apple belt northward ; and by crossing with 

 the Siberian crabs, the apple belt will be carried as far north as we care 

 to go on this continent. 



You may think that you have apples that are good enough for 

 anybody. But you have not, and never will, until apples are originated 

 with the high quality of Esopus Spitzenburg. Yellow Newtown, Dyer, 

 Jonathan or Grimes Golden, and the shipping and winter-keeping ca- 

 pacity of the Ben Davis. And we must not rest until we have apples 

 of the highest flavor and good shipping capacity for every season, from 

 earliest summer until apples come again. In order to extend perma- 

 nently our apple miarkets, we must insist on securing varieties combin- 

 ing the best market and shipping qualities with the highest excellence of 

 flavor, as well as hardiness, vigor and productiveness of tree. 



We must look upon the breeding of fruits better adapted to modern 

 conditions as the same kind of work as the inventing of improved ma- 

 chinery to meet new demands. And inferior seedlings are simply the 

 shavings in a workshop^ — something necessarv and incidental to the 

 carrying out of the work. 



BETTER QUALITY IN FRUITS. 



That high quality is appreciated in the markets as it should be i* 

 denied by many. The claim is made that bright color, large size and 

 good shipping capacity and productiveness of tree are of far more im- 

 portance than excellence of quality. This explains why Ben Davis and 

 other varieties of this type are more popular over a wide area than va- 

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