110 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



SUCCESSFUL NEW FRUITS AND FAILING OLD VARIETIES. 

 BY HON. K. D. GRAHAM OF GRAND RAPIDS. 



I have prepared no paper on this topic, tliinkiug it would be just as 

 well, perhaps much better, to talk a few moments. It is one with which 

 we are all more or less familiar, and in this manner we can simply get 

 up a discussion of the question as to failing old varieties and successful 

 new ones. The question of successful new varieties, especially, is one that 

 is subject to many circumstances, many conditions. What is successful in 

 one section may be a failure in another. What I might consider successful 

 new varieties would be very unsuccessful with others. Therefore I do not 

 care to put down on paper what is a successful variety or a failing old 

 variety. 



It is a question in my mind as to what failing old varieties may mean. 

 Do we have any failing old varieties; and, if so, what are they? Take, for 

 instance, the apple: We certainh' have a great many old varieties in 

 which the trees have failed, perhaps as a matter of age, but if they were 

 planted as new and thrifty trees in virgin soil, with proper care, would the 

 variety itself fail, or has it simply been discarded? I have noticed it in 

 various wavs. For instance, a man buvs a new horse to use in his business, 

 and he pays a pretty good price for it; he gives that horse, ninety-nine 

 times out of a hundred, better care than he ever gave any other; he gives 

 it a little lighter work and a good deal better care, and if it 

 does as well even as the old horse has done, that horse is all 

 right. He wants some new seed wheat. He thinks his old 

 wheat has not been doing very well; he pays five or six 

 dollars per bushel for a new variety. He will put it on the very best 

 piece of ground he has, say on his summerfallow. He will give it extra 

 fertilizing, extra care, and all that sort of thing; and, if it yields a trifle 

 more than his old variety, that is all right, and his old variety is discarded. 

 Now, is it not true very much the same way with our fruit? The great 

 majority of our apple orchards through the state of Michigan were planted 

 thirty or forty .years ago. In ni}' experience it is seldom that going 

 through the country one sees a good, thrifty young apple orchard, although 

 we do occasionally, to be sure. The most of them are old and, through 

 over-bearing, perhaps the want of care or want of fertility or something 

 of that kind, they have ceased to bear and ceased to be good. With the 

 apple more than with any other fruit we have failing varieties, and is it 

 not due to the fact that the apple is a long-lived tree and has borne itself 

 to death, has borne its(>lf out? Some varieties perhaps have not done so, 

 but look at the kinds that we have. The question of good apples, success- 

 ful new varieties, successful for marketing, or a first-class apple for eating 

 or anything of the kind, is governed largely by one's taste. It seems to 

 me, in looking back a quarter of a century, to my boyhood days, that we 

 had apj)les Ihat were vastly superior to anything we get now. I remem- 

 ber, for instance, the first we got — the mellow Early Harvest that we used 

 to get, as yellow as gold. Do we get any such apples to-day? It seems to 

 me we do not. Probablv it is mv recollection and nothinc; more. Further 



