THE MOOT II \.\ I'.l I.LETIX. 



205 



thoughl the French prime was a French prime and aothing else. The 

 whole matter was Bnally dropped, bul 1 still thoughl there was a good 

 deal of difference. Years after I had correspondence with Professor 

 Hedrick of New York, and in his greal work, "The Plums of Nevi 

 York," of several volumes, he makes the remark thai the "French 

 prunes as grown in California is worthj of varietal recognition." Thai 

 comes from an authority and il merely confirmed me in a conclusion 

 I had come to a good manj years previous. Again my opinion or con- 

 viction was confirmed still more when I was in Prance five years ago 

 and spenl some time in the prune districts. I found there thai the 



small farmers were grafting more or less, s f their prune trees, 



which largely were grown from seedlings or reproduced from suckers, 



offsl 1- from Hif orchards. The fact that those d s originally were 



grown as a more or less mixed lol from the seed and propagated from 

 suckers shows thai there must have been variation, because they were 

 all originally seedlings; and when we got our firsl grafts from France, 

 brought out, as history tells us. in the early days of Pellier, a sailor, 

 and a brother of a man living in San Jose— he brought these grafts ou1 

 and naturally they were taken from different sources and might easily 

 have been more or less mixed unconsciously, and we so imported several 

 t\ pes of the French prune. 



This matter was treated thoroughly by the late Felix Gillet, and 

 unfortunately he died while he was still working on the mailer. He had. 

 however, introduced several distinct types of the French prunes and 

 they were disseminated throughoul California. Here and there yon 

 may find these trees where the grower, the owner, has kept them sepa- 

 rate, and you will find those distinctions. lie had them under certain 

 names. 



What I want to impress upon you is that we may and ran raise the 

 standard of our French prune and net only of that bu1 of all fruits in 

 the vaine way. by careful attention to bud variation. It can not he done 

 at once. It is impossible to improve all of our stock- and all of our 

 orchards immediately or in a very short line bul if all growers insist 

 upon greater care being given, insist upon knowing tin- sources from 

 which certain buds or grafts are obtained, it will all aid the nurserj men 

 and hack them up in their endeavor to raise the standard of the fruits. 

 There are scattered about the state ami introduced more or less every 

 year several so-called new varieties of fruits, often put upon the market 

 under the name of the originator or some introducer, ami these almost 

 invariably are from hud-variants, from some tree in an orchard which 



has been found to produ seeptionallj good fruit. It is not enough 



simpK to propagate from a tree which has a good crop hut it needs to 

 l.e watched over for a scries of years. We need to keep a record ami 

 follow more scientifically and carefully its improvement by hud selection 

 following along the lines of the orange growers of southern California, 

 where they have expert men under the Departmenl of Agriculture 

 directing these operations. Thai has been done for a number of years 



and is recognized down south as tl nly way to get a profitable orchard. 



As yon know and as has been explained by the experts who have these 

 matters in charge, a hook account is kept of certain orchards, where 

 each tree is mapped out ami a record kept of its productiveness and the 



