NURSERY CULTURE OF THE APPLE. 333 



men in the northwest, but who is not now hving, got that idea in 

 1873, after that hard winter, and thought the crab was the thing. 

 He secured all the crabs he could get hold of and saved the seed and 

 went to propagating trees on crab roots. His nursery proved a fail- 

 ure, and the originals planted were more or less a failure. The 

 crab root is a success for grafting upon it the crab cion. The only 

 success Mr. Wilcox met with was with the Utter and the Astrachan 

 put upon this root, which grew more rapidly than upon the apple 

 root, but after four or five years they were all toppled over. The 

 only success he had was to graft the crab upon the crab root and 

 top-work other varieties upon the branches, and whenever he found 

 varieties congenial they were a success. I bought a good many 

 trees from Mr. Wilcox on those crab roots, and some of them lived 

 for seven or eight years. The crab root to use to make a root-graft 

 is not reliable for a great many of our varieties. I believe that the 

 road to success — if I lived in Dakota and had to have those roots I 

 would make a dwarf tree — but the road tO' success for the general 

 nurseryman is to secure seeds of the hardiest varieties as far north 

 as he can secure them, and then you will get something into which 

 nature has put the germ of a little more hardiness. 



Mr. J. S. Park : I have had some such experience as has been 

 spoken of here, and I lay my failure to some other things than have 

 been assigned by Mr. Harris. Perhaps it was from the cause he 

 speaks of. I sent a good many years ago to Mr. Whitney, of Illi-. 

 nois, of No. 20 notoriety, and bought a lot of crab seeds. I sowed 

 those seeds, and when they were grown enough I took them up and 

 grafted them, using some seventy or eighty varieties of apples, such 

 as the Ben Davis, Baldwin, Northern Spy and enough others to make 

 some eighty varieties, and all of them died. I think I could have 

 found a few, such as the Briar Sweet and some of those varieties 

 that did live, but I laid the loss of them at that time to the fact that 

 I got the seeds from the south. I had an idea if I had got northern 

 seeds I would have done better. 



Mr. C. G. Patten (Iowa) : This I consider a very important 

 question for the horticulturist oi the northwest to consider, and as 

 I have had considerable experience along this line I wish to rise 

 thus early in your session to say a few words. As Mr. Harris has 

 said, and according to my experience has said very truly, any one 

 who relies upon the seedlings of the whole root of the yellow crab, 

 or any of that type of crab, will meet with utter failure. I do not 

 remember whether it was in one of the Minnesota papers I made 

 a report a few years ago in regard to my Avork, but I will briefly 

 state it here. After the winter of 1872-3, as you know, the roots of 

 our trees were terribly killed all over the northwest, and the follow- 

 ing summer a large quantity of seed of the cherry and large red and 

 yellow crabs was planted, and the people planted the seed with a 

 great deal of courage. I tried at least seventeen or eighteen varieties 

 of the apple, as well as the Hyslop crab and one or two others 

 that my memory fails to catch just now, and I tried that on a very 

 extensive scale. I grafted the first year, I think, at least 30,000. 

 For the first two years many of those trees apparently prospered ; 



