448 ANNUAL REPORT 



miles from this orchard, saved a quantity of seeds from Duchess 

 apples from Mr. Dorrance's trees. He planted the seeds on his farm 

 on the prairie and from them raised more than 200 trees. He says he 

 planted seed from no other variety but Duchess. He cultivated these 

 trees up to 1872. That winter, 1872-3, killed the most of them. The 

 best of those that lived he transplanted to his orchard in the spring 

 of 1873, there being about a dozen of them. 



I saw these seedlings for the first time in the fall of 1875. Several 

 of them were then bearing, and some of them well loaded with fruit., 

 I did not see the fruit of Peerless at that time, as it bore but three 

 apples that year and someone had stolen them. I was so impressed 

 with the appearance of the tree that I then and there wanted to buy 

 the right to control it for one year, and ofi^ered Mr. Miller such a 

 large price that he became alarmed as to its probable value, and as a 

 result I did not get the scions and the tree was not propagated from 

 till the spring of 1887. This explains to the public why there are no 

 trees of it for sale. 



The fruit of Peerless and several of the other seedlings was shown 

 at the State Fair in 1878, and also at the winter meeting of this 

 Society in 1883. A half bushel of Peerless apples was sent to New 

 Orleans in 1884. It took the First Premium at our State Fair in 1886 

 and was there awarded $5 as the "Best apple for all purposes of North- 

 western origin." Being on exhibition at our winter meeting in Jan- 

 uary, 1887, it was pronounced by vote of this Society "The best 

 seedling apple known." 



Of the productiveness of the Peerless I will say, it bore one bushel 

 in 1876, kept increasing in its yield till it bore seven bushels in 1882, 

 nine bushels in 1884, about one bushel in 1885 of extra large fine ap- 

 ples, and more than ten bushels in 1886. Mr. Miller says of the fruit 

 that it averages as large as Wealthy, if not larger; ripens from ten to 

 twenty days later; hangs on the tree in a high wind perfectly; keeps 

 better than Wealthy and is fully its equal in flavor and quality. 



Mr. Miller's orchard is on a black loam, prairie soil with clay sub- 

 soil, and is on the prairie about two miles from the edge of the Big 

 Woods, and more than ten miles from any lake. The location is a 

 bad one, as is proved by the fact that five-sixths of Duchess and all of 

 Wealthy in the same orchard were killed in 1884. In 1885 the orchard 

 seemed to be the hot-bed of blight, yet Peerless escaped uninjured. 



There is not another tree in the known world that has stood or can 

 stand what Peerless has stood for twenty years, and produce the large 

 crops of fine winter apples it has produced. It is rightly named, it 

 has no peer or equal in tJiis dry, cold, windy climate. 



