WISCONSIN SEEDLING APPLES. I89 



WISCONSIN SEEDLING APPLES AND THE GOOD THEY 

 ARE DOING US. 



A. D. BARNES, WAUPACA, WIS. 



The value of our seedling apples, so far as dollars and cents 

 are concerned, is beyond the power of man to estimate, but their 

 good can be appreciated if not approximated. Suffice it to say, 

 that our seedlings have for the past ten or fifteen years been our 

 encouragement and the apple producing trees. Of all our 

 achievements and of the laurels won at all the national exhibi- 

 tions, including the New Orleans Exposition, Paris Exposition, 

 World's Fair at Chicago, Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Oma- 

 ha, and the Pan-American at Buffalo — our Wisconsin and Alin- 

 nesota seedlings have been the most prominent features in our 

 whole apple exhibit, thereby proving their predominance over 

 our old and standard sorts. 



There is not one single orchardist in Wisconsin or ^linnesota 

 who does not point with pride to his Wealthy, Wolf River, Mc- 

 Mahon and Northwestern Greening, together with other and 

 numerous lately named seedling sorts. I will venture this as- 

 sertion that had it not been for the four above named sorts that 

 our apples would not have had any attention paid them at the 

 national shows, to say nothing of not winning prizes and fame. 



I feel safe in saying that the past five consecutive crops of ap- 

 ples in Wisconsin were over two-thirds of them of Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota origin ; and in my own case in central northern 

 Wisconsin, in my four past crops, ranging from 600 to 5.000 

 bushels each year, more than seven-tenths of my apples were from 

 this type of trees. 



Central Wisconsin abounds in thousands of choice seedlings, 

 the most of them unfortunately of fall and summer sorts and as 

 yet unknown to the general public. I counted in a drive of about 

 forty miles, one week ago today, fifty-one seedling apple trees, 

 all of them grown up voluntarily and unaided in and by the road- 

 side, some of which had apples hanging on them at that date, 

 showing conclusively that they are winter sorts. 



This, of course, will appear somewhat like a fish story to your 

 Minnesota prairie friends, so I will inform you that this particu- 

 lar drive was through a sandy, timbered section, where no stock 

 are or have been allowed to pasture in the highways for a great 

 many years, and from one-half to two-thirds of the country is 

 improved with many small orchards. Some of them are old seed- 

 lings of from thirty to fifty years of age. Now here let me make 



