STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 71 
tunate that the meetings of our State societies occuron the same days. 
For twenty years I have watched carefully your attempts at progress in 
adapting varieties to climatic extremes, and I have sent many thousands of 
Duchess, Tetofsky, Gros Pomier, Peach, Vermont Crabs, etc., to your State, 
at an early day in the history of your organization. 
You ask me to give a few notes on the relative claims to public attention 
of the Russian fruits and of seedling varieties. Not in the form of an essay, 
but as a free and easy talk, hastily written, I wish to urge upon your atten- 
tion two or three leading thoughts, which do not seem to have had due 
weight in your deliberations as a society. 
Seedling Production of Iron Clads. 
The first is regarding the methodic production of desirable ‘‘Iron Clad’”’ 
varieties of the apple and other fruits by seedling production. The idea is 
by no means new. as during the years following the death of. Van Mous, 
Knight, and London, the pages of the Gardeners’ Chronicle—under the able 
management of Dr. Lindley—were richly sandwiched with items of experi- 
ence in this line which we should consider valuable. The origin of the 
Wealthy gives the key note to this thought. Its maternal parent was, 
beyond a shadow of doubt, one of the thick-leaved crabs of the Astrachanica 
type common in Canada and Vermont. Its inherent ability to brave sum- 
mer and winter conditions of prairie climate is derived—by a law of descent 
admitted in Europe for over one hundred years—from the crab. It is 
equally certain that its sudden acquisition of desirable size and fiavor of 
fruit is from the pollen of improved southern varieties. In Europe and 
America we have very many authentic cases of this sudden development of 
primitive forms by a single cross. In our brief horticultural history we are 
not destitute of striking examples. 
Mr. Rogers, of Salem, Mass., transformed the worthless, wild sage grape, 
into varieties of rare excellence and beauty as the result of a single cross. 
Yet the vines of the mystic product so far retain the hardiness of the mother 
stock, that they prove hardy wherever the sage grape can maintain health 
and fruitfulness. 
Mr. Hovey gave us the first of our family of great-sized and luscious straw- 
berries by a cross of our native species with the Frandiflora of South 
America. In this cross we secure the larger and sweeter fruit of the south- 
ern species; yet we retain to a wonderful degree the cariaceous leaves, the 
low crowns, and the far-reaching, wiry roots of our native form. Still 
again, a recent example is given in the seedlings of the coarse-fruited and 
thorn-like leaved Sand Pear. A single cross gives the large and good fruit 
of the southern forms of the pear, yet its seedlings retain the peculiar leaves 
and habit of the primitive form. 
In al] these cases the new varieties are all right as desirable acquisitions 
so long as they are propagated in the usual way. But when we grow seed- 
lings of any of these fruits, suddenly developed from hardy native forms, 
we cannot expect that they will prove as hardy as the maternal pa:ents. 
The less hardy element represented in the fruit, in all cases, will crop out in 
the second and all succeeding generations. I do not expect to hear of a 
seedling from the Wealthy, the Delaware, or Salem grape, the Charles 
