STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 63 



it will pay, for home luxury or market. If a success, the whole procedure will be 



given. 



Respectfully, PETER M. GIDEON. 



Superintendent of State Experimental Fruit Farms. 



Mr. Harris reviewed the niauagenient of the fruit farm. He thought 

 we needed a system embracing hand fertilization of blossoms to secure 

 a certainty of immediate improvement in varieties, and not be de- 

 pendent wholly upon chance crossing, through pollen carried by winds 

 and insects. 



Mr. Grimes respected Mr. Gideon's efforts so far as they went, but 

 was in favor of more systematic work in the experiments and more 

 complete records of it. 



Mr. Jordan defended Mr. Gideon's action, and Mr. Gibbs spoke as 



follows : 



Mr. President: This apple [presentingaplateof the Wealthy] is Peter M. Gideon's 

 contribution to the fruit interest of the Northwest, and not only to the Nortl^west, 

 but of the whole country, for it is becoming famous everywhere, and is eagerly 

 sought after for nurseries and orchards in all the apple belts of the land. It is 

 doubtful if any other apple combines in itself so many excellent points that go to 

 make up the perfect apple. It is hardy in tree, it has quality, size, fairness, color, 

 in fact every beauty to the eye; it bears early, profusely and annually, and it is a 

 fair keeper — a good, reliable keeper for its season, which is early winter. And its 

 propagation was not the result of accident either. It came to Mr. Gideon after 

 more than twenty years of practical, careful work in the planting of apple seed, 

 after years of failure and discouragement, and likewise of that impoverishment 

 which overtakes so many great inventors and followers of hobbies for the benefit 

 of mankind. By no set of men was it more joj'ously welcomed than by the nurs- 

 erymen of Minnesota, who have so largely composed the membership of this so- 

 ciety It made its advent at a time when they had played their last card for a 

 hardy winter variety, and lost, and ruin stared them in the face. The spring of 

 1S73 found them with nothing whatever of their own production in the shape of 

 an apple to tie to, and nothing of anybody else's production, east or south, excep^ 

 the Duchess and Tetofsky, both summer fruits. Thej^ were utterly unable to offer 

 a winter variety in market that had stood the test of that Arctic winter of ] 872-3. 

 At this critical time Mr. Gideon's Wealthy stood out as the only one alive, as you 

 might say, and promising, and they all grasped it and on it rode again into pros- 

 perity. It takes time to propagate and introduce a new variety of apple, and to 

 distribute and grow it so as to have it make its appearance over a state. Yet it is 

 but seventeen or eighteen years since the little crab seed that produced the Wealthy 

 was planted, and now, after having had it exhibited for manj- j'ears b}- the bushel 

 at our fairs and at our meetings, some here present have seen it during the past 

 autumn in the markets of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Lake City by the 

 hundreds of bushels, and if in the next ten years it does as well as it has done in 

 ^he past ten, it is perfectl}' safe to say that we have trees enough of it already 

 planted about the State to .supply the wants of the growers and leave hundreds ot 

 car loads to sell or ship abroad. 



