306 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



but when this is accomplished the hair on our boy's heads here 

 present will be gray as rats, and the road to successs through plant- 

 ing cross-fertilized seed will, when fully measured, prove but little 

 better. I venture to say not a single seedling of any value in the 

 Northwest would ever have survived a season like that of 1885 if they 

 had been occupying sites lower than three or four. The most ser- 

 ious difficulty our seedling men have now to confront comes from 

 the fact that we have no real established pedigree among our apples. 

 They have been mixed and re-mixed in every conceivable way for 

 the last three thousand years till they are now one heterogeneous 

 compound of mongrel varieties, so intricately mixed that no skill 

 can separate and arrange them for future use short of long years 

 of the most skillful efforts of our wisest and most profound scien- 

 tists. One of our own state, a noted horticulturist, did not miss his 

 mark when he said that if we were to continue the work of trying to 

 originate more valuable varieties from seed, we should at once em- 

 ploy some one especially educated along this line of work. Now, if 

 our learned professor was not capable of carrying on this work, 

 what can we expect by urging everybody to go at once into it, when 

 success is so extremely doubtful even in the hands of experts who 

 have had plenty of time and means to carry it on. 



Learned scholars tell us the same laws govern both animal and 

 plant breeding. Prof. Johnson, a noted animal breeder, tells us, "It 

 requiresprofound study of animal life to become a successful breed- 

 er." "This," he says, "will not be questioned." He further says, "No 

 conceited tyro or mere theorist need expect any results of value. 



If, as he says, the road to success in animal breeding is beset with 

 so many uncertainties, how much more are our apple tree breeders 

 beclouued along their road. What can we hope for, or expect, from 

 the efforts of totally unskilled hands who have never learned the 

 first letter in the alphabet of plant or animal breeding. This advice 

 would be the height of folly even where the environments are per- 

 fect. How different where almost every step taken to gain success 

 is confronted by stubborn opposition. Let us turn back the pages 

 of history and examine the advancements made in our apple tree 

 breeding in the Northwest for the past fifty years. We have secured 

 the Wealthy, the best of all, and this forty years ago. Have we se- 

 cured anything better? Echo answers, "No!" Our friend Gideon 

 almost in his maiden effort produced the Wealthy, which is now the 

 peer of all we have known in the Northwest, but he does not claim 

 any special skill on his part. There is not a half hardy kind we ever 

 tried to grow here that could not have been successful, if set any 

 time since 1884— and this on almost any site over the Northwest. 

 Hardy peaches have scarcely lost a bud since 1884-5! If these state- 

 ments are not correct I would kindly ask my seedling friends to 

 correct such here, that I may have a reasonable chance to defend my 

 position. But in such cases as we had the Wealthy, Fall Orange, 

 Jonathan, Connecticut, Seek-no-further, Ben Davis, Willow Twig, 

 and many others, properly top worked, we saved them, while all on 

 their own stems went out, with scarcely an exception, except here and 

 there one which, perchance, happened to be occupying some pecul- 

 iarly favored location. 



