A HARDY, LONG-KEEPING APPLE. 305 



He color is not quite as good, and its shape and size are not quite 

 as good, but it evidently has the flavor we are looking for, with the 

 exception of my No. 1. I have numbered that No. 33. 



I have another that has not fruited. I have been expecting great 

 things from it because it has a fine spreading habit, with large 

 leaves, but I have not yet succeeded in getting it to fruit. 



Then I have a thousand or more seedlings from the Jonathan, 

 now two years old. I expect there are a good many of them crosses 

 between the Geniton and the Jonathan; I am looking for great things 

 from them. I have also a number of seedlings of the St. Lawrence 

 and Duchess that are very fine, and I know that among them all 

 there are some long-keeping apples. 



THE PROSPECTIVE VALUE OF NORTHWESTERN 

 APPLE SEEDLINGS. 



EDSON GAYLORD, NORA SPRINGS, IOWA. 



I have hesitated to accept the position assigned me by my Minne- 

 sota friends, knowing my inability to do anything like justice to a 

 subject that has for ages baffled the skill of our very best scholars, 

 and set at naitght the wisdom of our most profound philosophers. 

 Without stopping to fully explain how and why this subject has 

 recently taken such hold on the people of the Northwest, I will only 

 say that very much of this excitement, which has well nigh thrown 

 so many into a craze, has been brought on through the unceasing 

 and persistent efiforts of various individuals who have seen their 

 opportunity to fill their pockets by raising and continuing this fas- 

 cinating excitement. I have no wish to cast any reflections on our 

 seedling men. Many of them are among our very best men, and 

 many among my warmest friends. They have gone into this work 

 believing they had struck the keynote to honest success. 



I have known the history of nearly every seedling apple tree of 

 note that has been known in the Northwest, and, after testing nearly 

 all, I am compelled to state that there is not one I would set as a 

 gift. The Malinda is not a seedling tree but was propagated from 

 cuttings taken from a tree, by I. W. Rollins, that was growing in his 

 father's yard, in the town of Stroffard, Orange Co., Vt. The cuttings 

 were taken from the tree about forty years ago, brought to Elgin, 

 Minn., where he propagated them for sale. Though first grown in 

 Minnesota, the seed from which the Wealthy was produced was 

 grown in or near Bangor, Me., over a thousand miles from its 

 adopted home in Excelsior, Minn. 



I have long been convinced that all our seedlings have come to us 

 from being grown on unusually favored sites. I have not been able 

 to learn of one that has not been grown on sites as high as two or 

 three on a scale of one to seven. The original Wealthy occupied 

 the hardest site of any I have known, but it was killed down in 1885, 

 and nearly every tree was swept from the Northwest. I fully believe 

 that a duplicate season of 1884-5 would sweep away every seedling 

 except the crabs and hybrids and such others as have been properly 

 top-worked. Our best results will come to us by acclimating, 



