TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 227 



]f I had a chart here, I could show you more plainly. At the base of 

 every petal, there is a little pistil. It is extremely small. We take the 

 plant when the flower is in a half-developed condition, and with a pair of 

 scissors shear it all off closely until we get to the pistils. Then we allow 

 them to stand a day or two; at first they come up closely, then they spread 

 out, and then they are in condition to receive the pollen. The next con- 

 sideration is, what do we want? Of course there are some varieties, some 

 forms, more popular than others, and those we wish to increase and per- 

 petuate. So we look around. For instance, we have a loose flower, this 

 one, for example (taking one from those on exhibition) ; and yet I would 

 like to have one in this form, for it is larger (displaying another flower). 

 Some bright morning I will open this to the center. There are a few cells 

 in there which produce pollen; we then take a fine, camel's-hair pencil, 

 collect the pollen and apply it to this. This one is the staminate parent, 

 and this the pistillate parent. Most of us keep a record of the parentage 

 of all our seedlings. In fact, I can tell you the parentage for five or six 

 generations of every seedling we have produced. This (showing a flower) 

 is a variety that was awarded the silver cup at Denver. It has also been 

 before the committee of the Chrysanthemum society of America. Per- 

 haps I might better tell you more of this. We have (just as our nursery- 

 men have) a great many men who have not the best of scruples in send- 

 ing out new varieties. They send out a thing under a glowing descrip- 

 tion, and it is not half so glowing when you come to grow it. People 

 are getting tired of buying new varieties; and so, with this idea in view, 

 the society has appointed five committees, at Cincinnati, Boston, New 

 York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, consisting of prominent chrysanthe- 

 mum-men. To them we submit our seedlings. We have a scale of 

 points, embracing color, form, and size of stem, and all things that are 

 necessary to a good bloom. This variety has been submitted to five of 

 these committees. Last night I received the last report. It has received 

 at least eighty-five points before each of the committees, and more than 

 that before most of them. At Boston it scored 100 points, at New York 

 85, Philadelphia 95, Cincinnati 87, Chicago 93; an average of 92. 



