IQ6 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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better shaped than some of the first specimens seemed to lie. x\t 

 first they seemed to be of various shapes, but now they are more 

 uniform and have more the shape of the Senator Dunlap. They are 

 all of a very even shape. 1 have also noticed that there seems to 

 be a difference in regard to the soil. 1 sent a number of plants 

 out to Long Lake, and the man who set them was told by a number 

 of his neighbors that the Brandywine was not good for his section, 

 and he thought he had made a mistake in ordering that variety, but 

 he took them anyway and set them out. He has told me since that 

 in shipping them up the country the men who bought them told him 

 the berries were of better quality than any they had ever received 

 from the Hood river district; and they did not seem to be like the 

 Brandywine raised out in that section. I do not know what the 

 difference was, I am sure, unless there is something in the way of 

 training that would make that difference — in a different selection 

 perhaps. I do not know what other reason could be given for it. 



Mr. Brackett : Mr. Hoyt, 1 see, raises his pedigree strawberry 

 plants like the rest of us do our strawberries. I think it is necessary 

 to define what the words pedigree, ancestry and thoroughbred mean. 

 The dictionary defines pedigree as "known ancestry in a line oi 

 registered ancestors." Thoroughbred means from the best breed, 

 as in the horse. Ancestry is defined as our ancestors we pass down 

 from. However, these words all pertain to animals and not to 

 plants. They could not pertain to plants except as plants are grown 

 from seed. Most of our plants are grown from seed or buds, 

 and a plant grown from a bud is not a hew production. A bud is 

 a layer, a sprout or a graft, and it is a part of the original plant, 

 and you have therefore no new production. If we get a plant from 

 the seed, it is a new production. It may, or it may not, resemble 

 the parent from which it came. I could refer you to twenty-five 

 or thirty experiment stations that have given this matter of pedi- 

 gree strawberries a thorough test, and without exception they call 

 it a humbug. Mr. Crawford, of Ohio, one of the largest growers 

 in the United States, has given it the closest study. He procured 

 plants from everywhere in order to make the test thorough. He 

 got plants from some of the oldest beds he could find, some of them 

 twenty years old, and he planted them and cultivated them right 

 alongside of the best pedigree plants so-called he could get in the 

 United States, and the result was that when they came into bearing 

 they were exactly the same. They were no larger and no smaller 

 and were just as productive as the other. That is where this pedi- 

 gree feature is misleading. It purports to possess something that is 

 not there. It can have no footing whatever unless the plant is grown 

 from the seed, and the parents from which it is grown are known. 

 Mr. Kellogg, of Michigan, was the father of the so-called pedigree 

 strawberries. Mr. Kellogg is dead, but he made a fortune out of 

 the idea. There is this to say in favor of the pedigreed plants, 

 and that is, if anyone has made up his mind to buy them he will 



