268 ANNUAL REPORT. 



1,000 trees, and in the time made frequent additions to the or- 

 chard of old named varieties — all Southern or Eastern grown 

 trees and seeds, and all kept as long as they could be made to 

 live in Minnesota, and to-day only two trees remain. One of 

 those, the Wealthy, and grown from a cherry-crab seed, obtained 

 of Albert Emerson, of Bangor, Maine, of whom I obtained cious 

 at the same time, from which I grew the Duchess, Blue Pear- 

 main, and the Cherry-crab, all of which, combined, were the 

 foundation of Minnesota horticulture, that to-day is the pride 

 and hope of the Northwest. But since those varieties came into 

 bearing we have planted only of our own growing of seed, with 

 forty first-class varieties the result. Not all large, but each first- 

 class of its size, and none of the forty less in size than Transcend- 

 ant or Hyslop, and every one better in quality than those, whilst 

 several will equal, if not surpass, every known poj)ular variety, 

 whether to eat from hand or for culinary purposes. 



And now, having given the results thus far of those that have 

 come into bearing, I will state the process by which those re- 

 sults were obtained. The process was, and is yet, the crossing 

 of the common apple with those varieties that had enough Sibe- 

 rian crab in the composition of the tree to make of it what we 

 term an iron clad, and the process is, by close iDlanting, that 

 wind, bees and other insects can the more readily and surely 

 carry the pollen from bloom to bloom — from one variety to an- 

 other — so as to fertilize the germ of the fruit, and the seed so 

 fertilized we plant, and when the young trees are large enough 

 to set in orchards, we select the best and then wait to see what 

 the fruit will be; but it is not every seed that will produce a good 

 apple, for no two seeds will be fertilized just alike, hence no two 

 apples just alike, even from seed of the same apple. 



From the same lot of seed we grow apples from the size of a 

 large green pea up to the largest size, and of every imaginable 

 form, color and quality, and diverge as widely ia form aud habit- 

 of trees as in fruit; and thus far, of those selected and set in or- 

 chards, about one in each fifty has given a first-class apple, and 

 for the reason that our seedlings are a mass of mongrels — mon- 

 grel crossed in the mongrel — each, perhaps, of a thousand 

 grades; hence the uncertainty as to what we get. Yet we have 

 demonstrated that out of a great mass we are sure to get some- 

 thing good. The hardiness of the crab has to be retained in the 

 tree and size without the astringency of the crab flavor in the 

 fruit, and to judge with any degree of accuracy as to what class 



