AMERIOAISr ASSOCIATION OF NURSERYMEN, 

 AT DETROIT, JUNE 20 AND 21. 



THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 



The opening session, Wednesday morning, President C. L. Watrous in the 

 chair, was devoted to appointment and reports of committees and discussion 

 of various matters not of interest to others than the members. 



Upon re-assembling in the afternoon the first proceeding was the annual 

 address of the president. After noting the success of the association in secur- 

 ing a change of freight classification of trees in boxes from first to third class, 

 and the favorable prospect of reduction of the postage rate for seeds, bulbs, 

 and cuttings, Mr. Watrous discussed "Hardy Varieties of Fruits/' among 

 other things saying that, in regions where fruit trees have suffered from 

 extreme cold, " it has been observed that varieties of trees and plants indige- 

 nous to that region, or descended from such indigenous forms, have suffered 

 least, if at all. In regions where all fruits descended from foreign ancestors 

 have been severely crippled, the native forms and their derived varieties 

 have suffered comparatively little." 



Mr. Watrous thus continued : 



"Among fruits the apple, most important of all, and wholly of foreign 

 ancestry, has suffered most grievously, the cherry and plum, also of foreign 

 ancestry, suffering the next heaviest losses. Our grapes, east of the Rocky 

 mountains and outside of greenhouses, being largely of native ancestry, are 

 still ready for business or pleasure. The raspberries, blackberries, straw- 

 berries and gooseberries, all of native stock, are ready for use. Happily for 

 the country, all these last-named fruits have been so thoroughly emancipated 

 from their taint of foreign ancestry as to be reliable throughout all the regions 

 indigenous to their wild relatives. 



"It only needs that painstaking and conscientious men shall originate new 

 and better adapted forms, in every locality whose conditions render such labor 

 necessary, and shall seek out and propagate such promising chance seedlings 

 as may from time to time appear, in order that each and every botanical 

 region may have an abundance of varieties well adapted to its needs. 



"Throughout all of the great empire known as the Northwest, native 

 forms of the plum have now almost or quite supplanted the foreign stock. 

 The cherry and the apple still remain to be carried through the same course 

 of evolution, by seedling variation that has already been passed through by 

 the grape, the raspberry, the blackberry, the strawberry and the gooseberry. 



"A glance into the list of the venerable American Pomological Society will 

 show how very few years have been spent in changing the lists of approved 

 eorts from foreign to native names, and the different native species into what 



