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BT ee ee ee NCOP acy PEP LUE) POL Rye erees 2 ere 
APPLES. 105 
victims. The stock they furnish can be bought of reliable nurseries 
for one-third the price they ask, and of tried kinds. They find many 
customers among that blind, greedy class that cannot afford to send 
fifty cents for a year’s subscription to a good agricultural or horti- 
cultural paper. 
I will close this paper by quoting from an address of ProfessorC- . 
V. Riley, late entomologist of the United States Department of Agri- 
culture, in regard to the important part bees play in apple produc- 
tion. After mentioning the twenty million dollars worth of wax and 
honey produced by the 300,000 beekeepers in our country, the pro- 
fessor says: “The service directly rendered to man by bees, how- 
ever,in supplying the products mentioned, is but slight as compared 
with the service indirectly rendered by cross-fertilization of our cul- 
tivated plants, and it has been estimated that the annual addition to 
our wealth by bees in this direction alone far exceeds that derived 
from honey and wax. One of the latest discoveries bearing on this 
subject, very fully enforcing the general principle, was presented to 
the society forthe firsttime within thepast year by our fellow-mem- 
ber, Mr. M. B. Waite,as a result of his investigations for the division 
of vegetable pathology in the Department of Agriculture. He has 
proved that a majority of the more valued varieties of our apples 
and pears are nearly or wholly sterile when fertilized by pollen of 
the same variety or that they bear fruit of an inferior character and 
very different from that produced when cross-fertilized; further, 
that were it not for the cross-fertilizing agency of bees, scarcely any 
of these fruits could be produced in the abundance and perfection in 
which we now get them, and that to secure the best results and 
facilitate the work of the bees, it is yet necessary, in the large major- 
ity of cases, to mix varieties in the same orchard.” 
REPORT ON APPLES: 
D. F. AKIN, FARMINGTON. 
The report of your committee on apples for the year 1894 will of 
necessity be brief. Many of the apple trees in Dakota and some of 
the -adjoining counties put out more than the usual amount of 
bloom; in fact, in many cases the bloom was excessive to a remark- 
able degree, trees literally white. Before the bloom was gonea frost 
came that appeared to stop the fertilization; so but a few of the trees 
started with their usual quota of fruit. The early part of the season, 
that is, May and June, was wet till June the twentieth, when a very 
severe and quite extensive hailstorm destroyed many apples that 
were doing well till then. Now commenced a severe and peculiar 
drouth, which caused many of the remaining apples to drop from 
the trees before maturity. 
To increase the destruction of the apple crop a greater blight than 
ever before showed itself, and on trees not before affected by it; for 
instance, some Hibernals were completely destroyed. All the 
apple trees suffered more than ever before. With all the drawbacks 
of the season of 1894 there were some fine displays of apples at the 
county fairs, and taking the numbers of young trees that are being 
set out each year as a criterion, I hope that the future reports on 
the cultivation of apples will be more encouraging each year. ’ 
