212 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



a lot of winter keepers, but I found they were nearly all small, too 

 small for practical purposes. This past summer I visited those 

 localities and visited the trees from which those seeds were gathered, 

 that is, gathered for the family use of apples, and I found those trees 

 to be nearly all alive and doing well that the apples were picked 

 from forty years ago and fifty years ago, as I knew them, and I 

 remember some of those apples keeping all winter. It was quite a 

 common thing there as they buried their potatoes in a pit for spring 

 use to put in a few bushels of apples, of those same apples, and they 

 would keep through the winter in that way. Those were the apples 

 this seed was gathered from, and from the seed I planted I think I 

 have forty or fifty varieties that will keep until May and June in a 

 warm farm cellar. Now then, if they have produced in that way as 

 a standard thing we can value, let us select trees here, which I have 

 been doing lately. I have some Tallman Sweet trees growing, the 

 limbs of which interlock with those of the Wolf River, and I have 

 taken the seeds of the Wolf River apple, thinking I would get from 

 it the size and from the Tallman Sweet the long-keeping quality. 

 I am selecting seed in that way and planting a large amount of it, 

 which will eventually give size and keeping qualities. We have 

 plenty of small apples, we have harvest and fall apples, and if we 

 can get a large long-keeper it seems to me we have struck the ideal. 

 I can give instances where I have planted seeds from apples and 

 knew what I had raised, and I think by gathering and planting in 

 that way we may eventually get what we are working for. 



The President: I would not advise the rejection of all that did 

 not meet the expectation the first time, but would plant seed from 

 some of the more promising ones again. Fruits and all kinds of 

 vegetables will breed back five, ten or fifteen generations. Nearly 

 one hundred years after that short-eared sheep craze went out there 

 would be occasionally a lamb with short ears that could be traced 

 back to the time of an almost earless breed. 



Mr. Philips : I have visited a great many seedlings, and the 

 finest seedling; orchard I have ever visited was the orchard of Mr. 

 Freeborn, and I will give you his plan. He saved all the seed him- 

 self from hardy, long-keeping varieties, and he saved it from trees 

 that were grown near other good trees, so they were fertilized. 

 One year he would go to work and save a quart or two quarts of 

 Hibernal seed ; the next year he would save a like amount of Duchess 

 seed. He saved from the Fameuse, and he saved from the Utter, 

 saving them from where he thought they had the best surround- 

 ings. He would plant only one kind each year. They were the best 

 average lot of seedlings I ever saw. I went through the Duchess 

 seedlings, and five out of six seemed to be good enough to plant. 

 After his death I went there with Prof. Goff, and we marked a 

 number of them that we thought were valuable. They were all 

 seedlings that were grown from the Duchess apples. We could pick 

 out a row of seedlings that were grown from the Utter apples. 

 They did not all resemble the parent. 



Mr. Brand : What varieties produced the best ? 



Mr. Philips : I think the best apples were in the Duchess row. 



