64 ANNUAL REPORT. . 
ture was very valuable, and that all farmers who could procure 
them should read them. 
A paper entitled The improvement of Crab trees by top graft- 
ing, by O. Gibbs, Jr., Lake City, was read and ordered on file for 
publication. 
The improvement of fruit trees by graftang the limbs is as old as civilization, 
and the process is familiar to all residents of fruit regions. In the eastern, mid- 
dle and southern states, the best sorts of apples in the old orchards are called 
** grafted fruit,’ to distinguish them from the produce of the trees as they orig- 
inally stood, which were all seedlings. It is no uncommon sight there to see 
several kinds of apples growing on the grafted limbs of the same tree, and when 
a new variety is to be tried, the first step is generally to graft it somewhere in 
the orchard. By this process a test can be made some years sooner than by 
growing a new tree from the root graft, as the top grafts bear fruit in two to 
three years’ time. while the root graft is in the same period only got ready for 
transplanting from the nursery row, and must then have from two to five years” 
further growth before it will show its fruit. The grafting of common apples up- 
on crab trees has had one general difficulty to contend with, and that was, in 
the beginning, the slenderer, weaker growth of the crabs, their roots, bodies 
and hmbs not being strong enough to carry the heavier growths of the common 
apple. But this trouble has been lessened and in respect to some varieties al- 
most entirely removed by the improvement in the crab varieties themselves, 
The Siberians grow stronger than our native crabs, and then came the Tran- 
scendants and Hislops, stronger than the orginal Siberians; so that now we find, 
by several years’ trial in grafting into these, that by using the cions of certain 
varieties we produce a good union and assimilation, and make a sound fruittul 
tree with crab bodies and forks, and common apple tops. 
The advantages of this method is very obvious in this northwestern country. 
First, it offers us an improvement of our fruits with the trees we now have. The 
Siberians, Transcendants and Hislops "have had their day, and are no longer 
wanted, except in small quantities. One or two trees of each for canning or 
preserving, is all any family will want to use when the hybrid or improved 
crabs, like the Early Strawberry, Whitney and Minnesota become known. 
Second, it suggests to us a means of getting rid of the summer blight, which 
in its serious phases is almost exclusively confined to the three sorts first named, 
as the sorts that are to be grafted in are not themselves bad blighters, and the 
crab growths are, by the process of grafting and pruning, entirely removed, and 
thirdly, the grafting bids fair to extend our varieties of apples in this severe cli- 
mate by enabling us to use many tender sorts that upon their own bodies and 
forks would winter kill too badly to make them profitable. What would seem 
to be common sensejon this very important point agrees perfectly with our ob- 
servation of known facts. Here is a thrifty crab tree, sound at the root, sound 
in the body and sound inthe forks. This condition is what we generally find 
until the summer blight strikes the topmost hmbs and has had time to work 
down into the body. Now§we will suppose that we have worked the crab top 
all off by degrees, taking one, two or three years’ time to do it, according to its 
size, and in its place a top of limbs of the common apple all joined to the crab 
above its forks. We have certainly got the three weakest points of a tree per- 
