PRESIDENT S ANNUAL ADDRESS. I3 



that we already grow, the list is in many respects defective and at 

 the best exceedingly short. An entirely satifactory winter apple is 

 yet to be found. Our plums are beautiful and of high quality, but 

 the California plums still hold our markets. Grapes have dwindled 

 to an inappreciable quantity, and we have not as yet dared to 

 recommend a cherry. The varieties of the eastern and western 

 states have been weighed in our balances and found wanting, and it 

 is almost literally true that not one of them has proved of practical 

 value in the north. The eastern continent, especially Russia, has 

 been ransacked from one end to the other, and everything possible 

 been made to do duty for us. But if we except the Duchess apple, 

 the results of all our experiments with foreign varieties will not 

 make a respectable showing compared with the varieties that have 

 been originated with us in the short period since the settlement of 

 our own section. And so, judging the future by the past and 

 remembering that such has been the horticultural history of alL 

 newly settled regions, it would seem that we might make our watch- 

 word for future progress the words lately addressed to us by that 

 astute and successful horticulturist, Luther Burbank, of California : 

 "Minnesota, will in time, by growing seedling fruits have as good 

 plums, apples and berries as are now to be found in any other state, 

 and you have, of course, just the climate for testing. It 

 can not be done elsewhere." Mark the two great points made 

 by Mr. Burbank. By growing seedlings, and by growing them 

 right here. It is plain that we can grow them, for we already 

 have in different individual varieties all the good qualities so much 

 desired. What we need is a rearrangement of qualities that will 

 place them in one individual, and if we find ourselves lacking a 

 quality we can introduce it into the blood of such as we have by 

 bringing in an out-cross of a foreign variety strongly inpregnated 

 with this quality. But, 'Tt can not be done elsewhere." The germ 

 of the new fruits that we desire must be so modified by our own 

 air, soil and sunshine as to come into the world, "to the manor 

 born." Moreover it goes without saying that we should breed from 

 the best and the best adapted varieties, using our present vantage 

 ground instead of going back to the uncertainties of the past. Years 

 ago, when I first became interested in apple growing, it was a matter 

 of surprise and mystery to me that out of thousands and tens of 

 thousands of seedlings grown by the first settlers in our state so 

 few, indeed scarcely any, proved worthy of propagation. The 

 reason has since become clear: they were planting seeds of ahen 

 varieties that had no point of adaptation to our climate, having 



