STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 261 



duction by seedlings, there are rarely any multiplying of the same 

 varieties owing to the mixings in the blossoms of different sorts, 

 yet it is possible to make trees produce by their seedlings exactly 

 their like in fruit. Isolation from other sorts of fertilizing pollen 

 of any similar species, at the time when the flower-buds are 

 ready to break open, is all that there is to be guarded against, and 

 aoy tree that is blossoming in an orchard or garden, where no oth- 

 ers of same species are near it, or, at least, so far away that no in- 

 sects could carry pollen to it, will produce its like in fruit if the 

 seeds are saved and planted; because the pistils will be fertilized 

 from the pollen in the same flower. As an example showing the 

 truth of this statement, I will give the following : 



In the early days of Wisconsin settlement I knew of an orchard 

 that was planted with small, one year old apple trees; the land was 

 only cleared that spring ; it was in 1843, and there was not room 

 to put them all in orchard rows ; so the most of them were planted 

 in a nursery row, about twelve to eighteen inches apart. The laud 

 was white oak openings and was quite stump3\ Many of the little 

 trees were destroyed by the plow, and by rabbits, and browsing 

 from cattle, and but few were saved to be old enough to bear ; but 

 in the year 1849. one of them had a few dozen apples on, which 

 were the Gray Gilliflower. Mr. Hilliard, the owner, gave me a few 

 specimens of the apples to take home for a treat to wife and child- 

 ren. We saved the seeds. Eleven seeds were planted ; eight of 

 them grew ; we set the seedlings out when two years old. In 1856, 

 two of them bore apples, and they were the same as the fruit of the 

 parent tree. The next year the old tree hung full of apples, and 

 Mr. Hilliard brought us a dozen more. We planted these seeds 

 also, and one of the trees bore fruit the same year as the first lot 

 (1856), but these seeds had got pollenized by some other variety, 

 and the apples varied in character, some in shape, some in size, and 

 some in quality. In other words the apples from trees grown from 

 the seeds of 1849^ were aU alike ; from 1850, all different. There 

 was no other tree in bloom in the vicinity of the Grey Gilliflower, 

 when its crop of 1849 was set ; but the next year, three or four of 

 the adjacent trees of other sorts had come into blossoming, though 

 they did not bear fruit, and their blossoms had pollenized those of 

 the Grey Gilliflower, and the mixed and changed character of the 

 progeny from seeds of that year was the result of it; not one of 

 that planting is like the mother tree, while all of the first plant- 

 ing are exact reproductions. 



