EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 41 



reaches the ground it goes in and nothing is left behind. My solution has 

 10,000 pounds of water to one of arsenic, when ready for the trees ; and a 

 pint ol it might be drank by a human being and no harm ensue. To make 

 my solution I take five gallons of water, one pound of concentrated lye, and a 

 quarter pound of white arsenic, having the water warm so as to dissolve the 

 lye more quickly, and I take one gallon of this to one barrel of water to use 

 for spraying. 



Tuesday Afternoon Session. 



The session of Tuesday afternoon began with tbe reading, by the secretary, 

 of the following letter from Mr. B. Hathaway, who had been invited to fur- 

 nish a paper on 



PEDIGREE IN PLANTS AND FRUITS. 



Little Peaike Rondb, December 3, 1888. 



I have had no opportunity to give due study to the subject you proposed to 

 me to write a paper upon, and it is but little I could offer or suggest upon so 

 recondite a theme, at the best. 



That pedigree will do for us in the line of fruits and plants what it has 

 done and is doing in the animal kingdom, seems reasonable and in accord- 

 ance with all analogies. But we must first have the improved family, before 

 pedigree can become beneficially operative ; and the first problem, as it seems 

 to me, for Michigan horticulturists to solve, especially as it relates to the 

 apple, is the producing of a new race. 



This is not accomplished through pedigree, but must be sought through 

 hybridizing, crossing and selection. That we have the elements of a new race, 

 or new family, of the apple, one that will more fully meet the requirements 

 of the climatic condition of our state than anything we now have, I have no 

 doubt. 



We want an apple that shall be in tree as hardy as the Duchess of Olden- 

 burg, or any of the Russian varieties; that in fruit shall possess all the flavor 

 of the Northern Spy, the keeping quality of a well grown Baldwin or End 

 Canada, as these apples are when grown in the central or northern part of 

 the state. 



That a judicious cross of one or more of our most valuable varieties, upon 

 the best of the Russiail sorts, will result in a new family out of which, by 

 painstaking selection and the help of pedigree in further propagation, we 

 shall finally obtain the apple we want, I have the utmost confidence. 



Like every other good thing, however, it is not to be gotten in any easy 

 manner or by hasty method. If the desired apple is produced and tested 

 and ready to disseminate in 20 years, it will be well worth the long-time labor 

 and painstaking in its production. 



Then there are the crab hybrids, so called, of Minnesota, many of them 

 genuine crab hybrids, no doubt, out of which, by crossing upon such of our 

 common sorts as the Spy, Baldwin, Red Canada, Ilubbardston, etc., will be 

 produced a new family with great and distinctive merits of its own. 



Out of this, when the family character is once established, by careful 



