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and Roaring Lion and Broom Girl. I have raised, I suppose, three hundred different 

 seedlings, and I have thrown them all out but a few. I have now on exhibition here five 

 varieties that were among the more promising ones, and two of these samples, you will 

 see, have a little mildew on them. 1 would not like to throw out everything that mil- 

 dews, because these do not mildew the way the English varieties do. Some of the English 

 varieties mildew in such a way as to destroy the fruit altogether, I have been fruiting 

 these varieties for four or five years, and they have been giving very fair results ; but I 

 do not think they will match Mr. VVelliugton's if it succeeds in the way he says it is doing 

 now. So much depends on soil in the growing of gooseberries that one needs to know 

 what soil you are growing on before you-can form an idea of the comparative value of 

 the fruit. I have two seedlings that are verj'^ interesting from a scientific standpoint as 

 well as from a fruit-growing standpoint. They are raised from the seed of the wild 

 prickly gooseberry of the country, crossed with the Warrington, one of the best English 

 varieties. [The speaker here exhibited the berry in question to the meeting.] One of 

 these retains some of the characteristics of the parent ; and here is another that is per- 

 fectly smooth. Now these are both from seed of the same berry. The fruit is uniformly 

 larger than the female parent — the prickly gooseberry — grows with us, and the berry 

 appears to be of good quality. It may turn out to be worth propagating. The berriea 

 group heavily. The interesting fact of one parent being spiny and the other parent hairy 

 while one of the offspring is perfectly smooth, seems to upset the theory in regard to the 

 influence of parentage on offspring. 



Mr. a. M. Smith. — I saw several of these seedlings growing side by side with Down- 

 ing and Smith's Improved and the Houghton, and it seemed to me that some of them were 

 superior in size and equal in productiveness to any of those varieties. So that I have 

 wondered why Mr. Saunders did not have them propagated. 



Mr. Saunders. — I would like to make a remark about some seedlings I saw at our 

 President's yesterday. He has a number of new seedlings, and I think some of them are 

 fully better than any I have produced, judging from the size. But his are growing on a 

 soil better adapted for gooseberry production than mine are. In our market we can sell 

 the* Houghton Seedling for twelve cents a quart, and we cannot get them rapidly enough. 

 I see them ticketed at twelve and fifteen cents a quart in all the shop windows. 



Mr. Allen." — We have tried a number of the English varieties ; but they have done 

 so badly that we have given them up entirely. We grow nothing now but Downing's 

 Seedling, the Houghton and Smith's Improved. We consider the Houghton Seedling the 

 best gooseberry we have. It is bought up by everyone for preserving, for pies and for 

 every other purpose for which they are used. I have seen spots of mildew on some of the 

 berries here and there, but nothing to hurt the crop. We are selling this season at ten 

 cents retail, and I should fancy from the cropping quality of the bush that it will do well 

 at that. 



Mr. President Dempsey. — I am satisfied that the cultivation of gooseberries or 

 currants will pay anywhere. If our soil is not suitable for the cultivation of the goose- 

 berry, it is for the currant. One or the other will adapt itself readily to our soil. There' 

 is no difficulty in producing two hundred bushels of gooseberries to the acre. Even at 

 one hundred bushels to the acre, there is an enormous profit in cultivating gooseberries. 

 Mr. Saunders has already told you that they did not succeed well on sand. We have 

 Houghton's Seedling growing on sand that are badly mildewed now. All varieties nearly 

 are liable to be mildewed that are grown on sand. Downing's Seedlings have very 

 little mildew on them. They are very much more free from it than the Houghton Seed- 

 ling ; and I fancy they are more profitable than the Houghton, from the fact that while 

 the Hough tons last year only brought us five cents a quart the Downings brought us ten. 

 I would almost like to repeat here a little of the advice that Mr. A. M. Smith gave some 

 years ago in a paper produced — in Hamilton, I think it was — in regard to the cultivation 

 of the raspberry. He said that no man would receive such a great amount of satisfaction 

 in fruit culture as the man who undertook to produce seedlings among the small fruits. 

 When we commence to produce seedling fruits, we shall readily discern that we have got 

 something superior to the parent. Mr. Bucke will tell you that he has raspberries that 

 are superior to Mr. Saunders' hybrids, although they are a straight seedling from Mr. 



9 (F..G.) 



