40 state: POMOT.OGICAL SOCIETY. 



important requisite of red color. Hence the plantings of late 

 years here in our State have been largely, where not chiefly, of 

 Ben Davis trees. 



Furthermore, forty to fifty years ago the great states of the 

 interior of our country, in their earlier filling up with population, 

 had not a single variety of apples that would withstand their 

 winters. Within my remembrance, a single winter of unusual 

 severity destroyed substantially all of the fruit trees throughout 

 the prairie states. The demand was at once aroused for hardier 

 varieties. Our government sent to Russia for hardy varieties 

 which were successfully grown in that high northern latitude. 

 Professor Budd, an enthusiastic horticulturist of Iowa, went 

 abroad to the same country to study up the fruit growing of that 

 hyperborean climate, and brought with him on his return scions 

 of the many Russian varieties of which we have heard and read 

 so much in these later years. Enthusiastic experimenters set 

 about the work of originating new varieties that might prove 

 hardy enough to stand the winters of the northwest. Great 

 expectations wiere raised among fruit specialists all over the 

 country. I recall the remark of that cool and candid observer 

 and experimenter, the late S. L. Goodale, to the effect that he 

 looked for vast strides of improvement in the fruit producing 

 industry from the efforts going on to originate and search out 

 hardier varieties of fruit. 



As a result of this "iron-clad" craze that thus swept the coun- 

 try many new varieties have been propagated, recommended and 

 sold all over the country that have little other merit than hardi- 

 ness. The power to withstand a severe climate is a great merit, 

 but does not give us a good apple. This search for hardy varie- 

 ties was a necessity to the west. We did not need them, for we 

 already had varieties that would stand our conditions and give 

 us an abundance of fruit. But the demand for hardier varieties 

 to meet the want of the fruitless west settled down into this 

 "iron-ciad" craze, and spread throughout the country. Little 

 else was needed to sell trees than to label them ''iron-clad." This 

 has given us a class of apples, that while the}^ can be produced 

 in quantity, are inferior in quality. Such are the Ben Davis, and 

 the Pewaukee, Haas, Fallawater, Mann, Gano, and a host of 

 others that might be named. Not one among them all is a 



