ANNUAL REPORT OF SEEDLING COMMITTEE, I9O4. 167 



The President : As Prof. Green is on this committee and has 

 taken an active part in arriving at these conclusions, I am sure we 

 all want to hear a word from him. 



Prof. S. B. Green : I feel it is hard on me to follow Mr. Elliot. 

 He has made such an exhaustive and exceedingly interesting lot of 

 notes and comments on these seedling apples that there is abso- 

 lutely nothing more for me to say. I had the pleasure of going 

 over these seedlings this morning with Mr. ElHot, and it is really 

 a sincere pleasure to go over such a collection like that with a man 

 like Mr. Elliot, who is so well informed in regard to these matters. 

 I feel in many cases I can learn from him, I can assure you. He 

 talks about Prof. Hansen and myself being scientific and all that 

 kind of taffy, but I think Prof. Hansen and myself would be will- 

 ing to accord Mr. Elliot as good a scientific place in this seedling 

 production as ourselves. 



As I look at these apples, one by one, there comes to me some- 

 thing of the work of the originator. I take up this one, and 

 think of Mr. Akin. He is confined to his house, so he is not able 

 to come to our meeting. I can see his orchard where he sowed 

 the seed in 187 1, — thirty-three years ago. He sowed the seed 

 in his yard, and the orchard fronts on the road. They have been 

 exhibited, year after year, and during times of . discouragement, 

 when we were cast down, when we worked at low pressure, it has 

 been a great encouragement to the horticulturist to see what good 

 work Mr. Akin has done along that line. 



Here is a plate of apples of a good color, a surprising lot of 

 apples that are well up to the commercial standard. They are the 

 varieties shown here by Mr. Lyman, and I think of that orchard 

 out there at Excelsior, of the good work of Mr. Lyman, and of 

 the encouragement he gave for the growing of apples in Minne- 

 sota. Starting out as a pioneer, leading all the way, he raised these 

 apples from^ the seed of the Wealthy, and we are profiting by the 

 work of these people. It has been largely a labor of love with 

 them, but it has come by a lot of hard work; they gave their time 

 and money to it. 



Here is Mr. Lord's seedling. When I took at this I think of 

 Mr. Lord; I think of him sitting down here before us. He has 

 helped us build up a system of horticulture; he has given us the 

 Rollingstone plum, and he has done more for us in the growing 

 of plums — I almost said than the rest of us put together, but I 

 feel just that way about it. But that work that is being done is a 

 work that is helping to build up things, to make it easier for us 

 human beings to live, and to support a higher and better state of 

 civilization. That is what those things mean. 



So I might go through the whole list to show the effect of their 

 work, the stimulus it has been to the people in Wisconsin, to us 

 in Minnesota, and to the entire Northwest. I might say the same 

 thing of Peter Gideon in relation to the Peter and the Wealthy — 

 although they are hardly distinct enough to be called separate va- 

 rieties — and he has left a legacy that has been of so much profit 



