136 ANNUAL REPORT 



portions of the United States are native born descendants of 

 European varieties brought over in the early days of its settle- 

 ment, and without doubt in my mind some difficulty attended 

 the early efforts to adapt them to culture in our own climate and 

 soil. With the single exception of Duchess of Oldenburg there 

 is not, I think, a variety of European origin in general culti- 

 vation over any broad area of the country. What has become 

 of the apples of our grandfathers? They have all given place 

 to the young seedling generations to the manor born. They 

 were from England, France and Germany, and were very suit- 

 able progenitors of a race adapted to our Eastern and Middle 

 States, but now civilization has advanced beyond the borders, 

 and the great Northwest is filling with a people who have even 

 a keener relish and better taste for fruit than had their fathers. 

 The Northwest has clearer skies, brighter suns and drier atmos- 

 phere than those lands our fathers first trod. 



Russian apples were long since adapted to conditions similar 

 to ours. I expect that we will meet with difficulties in transfer- 

 ring them across an ocean and a continent. They will likely be 

 homesick and shorten their lives in pining for the land of their 

 birth; but will not their seedling posterity inherit their native 

 hardihood and vigor and an affinity for their new home and its 

 surroundings'? I do not expect that they will survive forever 

 or many of them prove worth naturalizing, but there will be 

 a survival of the fittest until some bright, vigorous seedling de- 

 scendant of each type roots them out and usurps their place. 

 I do not suppose that thirty years hence a half score of them will 

 be allowed a place in the Northwestern nurseryman's catalogue, 

 but I predict that just as certain as that the descendants of the 

 fruits of West Europe have become adapted to the more favored 

 portions of our country, just so certain will the descendants of 

 the fruits of the Steppes and valleys of Eussia find a congenial 

 home in Minnesota and upon the prairies of the Northwest. 

 And now you have in a nutshell what I think of the Russian 

 apples. 



It is to be hoped the Russians will be tested as soon as possi- 

 ble in all localities in the cold north, and thoroughly purged of 

 all that are worthless. I can not close without urging all cul- 

 tivators to raise seedlings from the best, and those who can to 

 cross the hardiest and best Russians with the most juicy and 

 best of other classes, and to raise seedlings. 



Mr. Wilcox gave notice of a proposed amendment of the con- 

 stitution with regard to fees of members of local societies. 



