PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEE:TING 131 



All'. Mason : 1 have a IVw trees on a small scale, to illustrate the idea to 

 the gentlemen, to give some idea of what it would cost a man to raise a 

 tree. It would depend on the luck he has, one year Avith another. A 

 year ago last August I had about :jU,OUU peach trees, and ihey were in 

 as fine shape as a man could wish. Last fall I had lost 2,700. What was 

 the cost of raising those trees? It has been just so several years. If I 

 had had good luck and raised all those trees, every one of them, I might 

 have produced them for three cents, the actual cost of the tree. Mr. Mor- 

 rill says he would rather raise wheat on the ground than to sell trees 

 for three cents apiece. Mr. Kellogg speaks of tree-peddlers. I am one 

 myself, I admit. I go through the country taking orders for trees, but 

 we have men who will sell trees for any price they can get. A man can 

 not produce good trees for three cents per tree. 



Mr. Graham: I have been very much interested in this question of 

 bud variation. I have myself noticed a great many times a variation in 

 the same varieties of fruit. For instance, the sweet apple, or nearly sweet 

 apple, which should be sour; or, very frequently, the Barnard which is 

 known as a freestone peach will be absolutely a clingstone. Lewis some- 

 times will cling somewhat, although ordinarily it is a freestone peach; 

 Hale's Early, which is not exactly a freestone, sometimes is an absolute 

 clingstone; other seasons it will be absolutely free. The Niagara grape 

 is peculiarly subject to this variation. One vine will be a good producer 

 of fine fruit, another produces very inferior fruit. But I have remarked on 

 more than one occasion that the higher-price trees I have bought have 

 been more subject to bud variation. For instance, a few years ago I 

 bought some peaches, I believe they called them Diamond, but I am not 

 sure. I think I paid a dollar apiece for those trees, and they were remark- 

 able for bud variation ! I bought some others they called Early Canada, 

 for which I paid fifty cents apiece. They were Serrated York. It was 

 simply a case of extreme bud variation! Three years ago I bought 200 

 Crane's Early of a nurseryman. I think I paid him ten cents apiece for 

 them. Last year, that is, the past season, they bore quite a lot of fruit, 

 and I had Alexander, Crane's Early, Lewis, Hale's Early, and Early 

 Rivers — another extreme case of bud variation I I have noticed very fre- 

 quently, too, that this bud variation has a wonderful tendency to occur 

 and recur in the nurseries of certain people. It is peculiarly adapted to 

 certain sections of the countrv, wdiile others are almost entirelv free 

 from it. There are other nurserymen in this state of whom I have bought 

 year after year large bills of trees, and there has never been a single 

 instance of bud variation in their trees. Now, it is something that I do 

 not understand, exactly; it is something quite peculiar, why it should 

 occur in one nursery almost universally and in another not at all. but is 

 more likely to occur in the high-price trees — these dollar trees that we 

 get of people who come along. 



Mr. Slayton : Is it not possible that this term " bud variation " is one 

 invented by nurserymen to act like charity, to cover a multitude of sins? 



But there is such a thing as bud variation. Let us call it sports. We 

 all know that similar ])henomena occur among animals, and why not 

 among plants of all kinds and fruits of all kinds? It certainly does. I 

 have seen a white weasel, and I haA^e seen a white red squirrel, pure white, 

 but a red squirrel nevertheless. We have all, perhaps, seen white black- 

 birds and white robins. I have standing in mv museum a white buck two 



