194 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



perience has that fact been made so evident as during the past summer. 

 I know of but one variety that stood the trying test of last June so well. 

 That one variety is the Peerless. It is a matter of easy proof that 

 among tens of thousands of Peerless trees there was no injury to its 

 leaves; while such varieties as Whitney, McMahon and Transcendent 

 crab were so badly injured that they did not make the growth of a single 

 bud after the 15th day of June. This leaf injury was not blight, but ex- 

 tended over a wide area. Testimony as to the perfect condition of the 

 Peerless leaves was received from parties in Maine, Ohio, Colorado, and 

 from central Illinois to Manitoba. 



I may here remark that it was evidently owing to a desire on the part 

 of our President Underwood and Secretary Latham that a waiting and 

 anxious world should know about the superior merits of this Peerless apple 

 tree, that this subject was assigned to me. If they were of the other sex 

 I would say that their keen discernment of that which is right and 

 appropriate was only exceeded by their good looks and their winning 

 ways. 



To return to the subject matter of hardy leaves. I remarked in the be- 

 ginning that, secondarily, the lease of the life of a given plant is modified 

 by external influences. One of these external influences may easily be shown 

 in the great and widespread injury to the leaves of nearly all trees last 

 June. The variety which entirely escaped injury, when scattered in large 

 numbers over a wide area, must possess the best leaf. This is natural selec- 

 tion. The fittest has survived. Nature does not select every year, or every 

 ten years, but sooner or later she makes the selection, and we must then be 

 content with her choice. There is no apple tree on this continent, tested 

 for thirty years, that approaches anywhere near the perfection of its 

 leaf to the Duchess of Oldenburg. It does well on the forty-fifth parallel 

 of north latitude, and does equally well 800 miles further south, in Georgia, 

 Alabama and North Carolina, You will ask, what is there uncommon 

 about the leaf ? Among other things characteristic of it is its great 

 size, its form, its thickness, its glossy upper surface and lastly its superior 

 cell structure. The first four are visible to all who have the disposition 

 to examine, the last is simply my opinion. There is one other feature I 

 will mention, and that is the great size of the terminal leaves. All of 

 these important characteristics have been retained and some of them im- 

 proved on in that celebrated child of the Duchess, namely, the Peerless. 



Leaves also serve other important missions in the economy of nature. 

 They help to purify the atmosphere of poisonous gases and make this 

 earth a better home for man. They also play an important part in the 

 formation of vegetable mould. We have it on the authority of Darwin 

 and others that leaves go on accumulating lime as long as they remain on 

 the trees. During their decay they generate an abundance of various 

 acids grouped together under the term humus acids. 



And now as I have briefly mentioned a few of the prominent character- 

 istics of leaves, I will "leave" the subject in your hands and extend to 

 each and all of you the wish that as you turn the leaves of life each one 

 turned may prove more bright and interesting than the one last passed. 



