162 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



have trees that are not producing well. It is from some cause and I 

 do not know what it is, but there is some reason. 



Mr. Yeager: The professor is right, it is from environment. 



Mr. Pollard: Well, I hardly agree with you. There is 100 acres; 

 the topography is rolling and practically the same as in the other, and 

 though I may be wrong, yet if I was planting trees I would rather get 

 my scions from an orchardist that got his scions from bearing trees, 

 than from a nurseryman that got his scions from water sprouts, and so 

 forth. I would infer from what you said that you think that the nursery- 

 men who are selling us these trees are practicing a game on us? 



Prof. Beach: If that is so I want to oiler my sincere apologies to 

 the great rank and file of the nurserymen. I do not want to give that 

 impression. 



Mr. Pollard: Now you spoke about this pedigreed stock at one time 

 and quoted the Jersey cow. How do you know about the pedigree of 

 that cow? Where do you go to get that pedigTee started? How far 

 back should the fruit man go? This industry is a new industry and 

 jhould we trace back to Mount Sinai? Some trees will bear apples and 

 bear big ones. In our orchard we had a row of Sweets; there were 

 two trees in that row that bore special apples, and I took 15 apples off 

 the trees and brought them up to the state fair one year and they 

 weighed fifteen pounds. Now those trees every year bear the same 

 kind of apples, and other trees standing the same kind of care every 

 year and in the same kind of ground bear no apples, and they are 

 the same kind of trees. Haven't we got a good start for a pedigree, in 

 a case like this? If not, where are we going to start our pedigree? 



Prof. Beach: First of all, I want to say with regard to the nursery- 

 men. As far as I see in the nursery catalogues there is less than five 

 per cent of the nurserymen tiialt, are offering pedigreed trees. Nov/' among 

 those who do offer trees I am going to give the man the credit of being 

 honest in his advertisement with regard to it, until I am compelled by 

 proof to take the contrary position with regard to it; but when the man 

 advertises to furnish pedigreed trees by the million when he must go 

 out and take them from the bearing tree, I begin to doubt what he means 

 by his pedigree. 



Then the other point, as to how far back must the pedigree go, I 

 would want the pedigree to go. back far enough. I would want at least 

 one generation to come into bearing so that I could demonstrate posi- 

 tively that the points of color or productiveness were inherent in the 

 scion, or whether it had been brought about by superior conditions of 

 environment. 



Mr. Pollard: Now one has a good many secrets they do not like to 

 reveal, but we have an apple tree, a (irimes Golden Pippen, that is crazy, 

 I call it,^ — the tree has gone crazy. I noticed two or three years ago as 

 I was goinc; by that tree and there was one tree tliat had raised apples 

 on it, and the apples were covered with rust on one limb, and all the 

 rest of the tree had the real Grimes Golden color, a light colored apple, 



