22 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
TRIBULE TO PETER MM: GIDEON: 
PROF. S. B. GREEN, ST. ANTHONY PARK. 
It is with some feelings that I am not able to do the subject full justice 
that I ccme before you this afternoon to speak on the works of Peter 
M. Gideon. I have thought it over with a great deal of care, and yet 
the ramifications of the work, such as he started, are so great that it is hard 
sometimes to draw the line as to what has been accomplished. It is hard to 
present, and I have no desire to overstate, but I wish to state the full amount 
of good that was done by Mr. Gideon, especially in horticultural work. 
I was not acquainted with Mr. Gideon in a personal way to any great ex- 
tent. I have been slightly acquainted with him during the twelve years I have 
been in Minnesota by occasional visits to his place, and know some of his 
work through outside parties, but I do not feel sufficiently acquainted to 
speak of his personal character. 
As we think of Peter M. Gideon the name is almost synonymous in our 
minds with the Wealthy apple. While that was his masterpiece, yet in 
admiring that we should not lose sight of the fact that he did an immense 
amount of work, as every one does an immense amount of side work 
before the work is done that attracts attention. Mr. Gideon raised a very 
large number of seedlings before he got the Wealthy. The seedlings which 
he raised, to put it in his own words, were ‘adapted for this climate, hardy 
and suited for every month in the year.” That is what he claimed, for every 
month in the year. He had “August,” “September,” “October,” and I do 
not know how many named varieties which he sent out. 
In thinking of Mr. Gideon’s work we should think of him chiefly as a 
pioneer, as a man who had no precedent to go by, and looking at it from 
that point of view I think his work looks bigger than by comparing it with 
the work that is being done and has been done the last few years. He prac- 
tically had no precedent to go by. He found on coming to this state that ap- 
ples were not sufficiently hardy. He had a theory that by combining the 
qualities of the crab, its hardiness, etc., with the larger varieties of apples, of 
the Pyrus malus type, it would result in something valuable. His experi- 
ments in that line have been profitable in that they have given us the Wealthy 
apple, but, whatever the value of the Wealthy may be, he has gone so far in 
that subject of producing hardy varieties, he seems to have gone into the 
subject so thoroughly, that he has contributed quite a large amount of scien- 
tific interest in that he has shown what we can probably expect to get out of 
the union of the crab and apple, and in so doing he has opened a broad field. 
It seems to me in that way Mr. Gideon should be looked upon as having 
contributed something of essential.value to science. In giving us the Wealthy 
apple he has brought the science down to a point so it is of commercial im- 
portance. So far as the trade value of the Wealthy apple is concerned I 
cannot take the time today to enlarge upon it; there are more to follow me. 
But today the Wealthy apple has a large number of advocates among intelli- 
gent, enterprising orchardists as the most profitable apple of all autumn 
varieties. In talking with Prof. Maynard, recently of Massachusetts Agri- 
cultural College, he told me that he regarded the Wealthy apple the best red 
fall apple for raising in the eastern states, and that he felt it was the thing to 
plant for the autumn trade. 
