STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 307 



2500 bearing trees of the Wealthy. The texture is tender inside, 

 although the skin is such that it will bear handling, like the Jona- 

 than, and its waxy finish, when ripe, protects it from evaporation 

 from within and penetration of the air from without. The flavor 

 is a slightly sub-acid, with a vinous quality. In fact, it is a better 

 •dessert fruit than the Fameuse, and belongs to the digestible class 

 of apples. In the Northwest its season is ordinarily late fall or 

 •early winter, although Dr. Hoskins, of Northern Vermont, classes 

 it there as a winter apple with the Baldwin. It stays mellow a 

 long time like the Seek no further, before commencing to decay or 

 lose its quality, but does not have any tendency to wilt. The tree 

 is not quite so hardy as the Duchess, its weakness being a tendency 

 to get injured on the stem while young. This can be overcome by 

 boxing. It ripens up its wood early in the fall. Our coldest and 

 most sudden winters never catch it unprepared, and we can grow 

 it perfectly as far North as the 4:6th parallel, and how much farther 

 we do not know. 



It is a very early, an annual, and an abundant bearer. This 

 variety was originated by Peter M. Gideon, of Excelsior, Hennepin 

 county, Minnesota, at Lake Minnetonka, about twenty years ago. 

 The seed was sent him by Albert Emerson, of Bangor, Maine. Mr. 

 Gideon thinks the seed that of Cherry crab. Professor Budd, of 

 Iowa, however, classes it as a Russian, from the characteristics of 

 leaf and bud, of the Astrachanica form, a straggler in heredity 

 perhaps by way of a cross, from some importation through New 

 Brunswick or Canada to Maine, and thence to Minnesota; as our 

 Duchess was from France to America after Andrew Knight brought 

 it from Simbirsk to England as the Borovinka and let it go over 

 to the French for trial, where a new name was given it. It is a 

 boon to the Northwest, and doubtless has value to the entire 

 North, for so far as tested in several states it appears to be of 

 general adaptation. 



The State of Minnesota gives Mr. Gideon a thousand dollars a 

 year and the use of a farm on Lake Minnetonka, to continue ex- 

 periments in fruit raising in his own way, without interference, 

 asking only that he report once a year to the Board of Kegents of 

 the State University. 



This other large, smooth apple is the Yellow Transparent, one of 

 the Russians of the Agricultural Department iraportature. It is 

 of good dessert and cooking qualiby, season earlier than the Duch- 

 ess; a reliable and abundant cropper. 



