176 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



above the ground is just the place where to work on the Si- 

 berian stock, I just throw this out as a word of caution, that it 

 is more than likely that you will see all those trees when they 

 come to the bearing point will be attacked with blight right at 

 this critical point, and so we lose our tree. 



Coming back to this subject, we do need a hardier stock, as 

 Prof. Hansen says, for all this cold and northern region. I be- 

 lieve experiments so far have proven that we have just those 

 stocks right here to our hands. Mr. Underwood in his most ex- 

 cellent paper calls attention to the experiments made with the 

 seedlings of the crab, and that, I believe, is just the outline, just 

 the solution for all of this region round about us. The Richland 

 crab, the Minnesota crab, the Whitney No. 20 and the Briar 

 Sweet and all that class of hybrids will furnish us just the seed 

 we need, because they have the proportion of apple placed in 

 them that permits them to work in harmony with them. I have 

 proven, as Mr. Underwood has proven, that the seedling of the 

 Whitney No. 20 and the Briar Sweet is hardier than the common 

 apple we are using, and I have also proven that the growing 

 trees of bearing age are reasonably free from blight and also 

 hardy. They are almost as hardy as any seedling of the Pyrus 

 baccata I have used or grown to fruiting size. 



There is another point that was raised by Mr. Smith, and 

 that is with reference to the size. In some of those seedlings I 

 found they held on for some time, but the Perry Russet, Fameuse 

 and several others I tried did not appreciably increase in hardi- 

 ness of the top of the graft, and my opinion is that it decreased 

 the hardiness of the top because of the great inharmony that 

 existed between the root and the scion. None of those trees 

 have made satisfactory trees either in hardiness or general ap- 

 pearance. It did, as I said before, dwarf them. Some of the 

 seedlings of the Pyrus baccata were more in harmony with the 

 e^raft I placed upon them, so they held out longer, but they were 

 a failure in the end, and the trees were never perfect trec^s. 



Now this year we have undertaken to save seed from the 

 Duchess, Wealthy, Whitney No. 20 and Briar Sweet, all those 

 hardier kinds, and in the Briar Sweet, and especially in the Whit- 

 ney No. 20, we found the seeds quite abundant, not as abundant 

 as in the little Siberian though, and they make splendid stock. 

 We have so many of those hybrids scattered all over this region, 

 and if we as nurserymen will be forehanded we will have all 

 these seedlings we need, and that they are of fifty per cent more 

 value than any other seedling we can obtain in this region I have 

 not the least doubt. 



As I said before, while I fully appreciate the effort Prof. 

 Hansen is making, and the experiments he is making, yet he 

 himself must know and does know that conditions even where 

 he is are so entirely different from what they are over a very 

 large portion of Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin that his ex- 

 periments must necessarily be of a different nature from ours. 

 His needs are different from ours. 



