STATE POMOI.OGICAL SOCIETY. 75 



VARIATION IN APPLES. 

 By H. P. Gould, Agricultural Department, Washington. 



It gives me a peculiar pleasure to meet here with you at this 

 time, for I have a sense, in so doing, of returning unto "mine 

 own;'' notwithstanding the fact that this is the first meeting of 

 your society which I have ever attended. I pity the man who 

 could forget the state wherein his boyhood days were spent, and, 

 though some years have now passed since I went forth from her 

 borders to be adopted by other states in turn. I still speak of 

 Maine as "home." 



I have chosen as my subject for discussion a phase of the 

 "variety problem," which, for the want of a better designation, 

 may be called "Variation in Apples." I do this, however, fully 

 aware of the difficulty which one invites when he attempts to 

 say anything about varieties. 



That there is any "problem of varieties" is comparatively a 

 new notion in pomology, but during recent years it has been a 

 subject of frequent discussion, but it seems to me that this dis- 

 cussion has not been to any fundamental purpose in most cases. 

 To know that a variety does thus and so in some particular state, 

 or county, or town, is not enough, and yet this is about as far as 

 most of the discussions and observations have carried the matter. 

 The behavior of a variety has but little significance until we are 

 able to interpret that behavior in terms of the conditions under 

 which the variety in question is grown. Let me say, in passing, 

 that one of the specific lines of research now conducted by the 

 office of pomologist of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture is an effort to work out, in systematic detail, the adapta- 

 bility of different varieties to different conditions, and con- 

 versely, to determine just what the influence is upon varieties, 

 of the various conditions under which we find them growing. 

 This line of research is officially designated as "fruit district 

 investigations," and it is in connection with one phase of these 

 investigations that some of you are giving willing and much 

 appreciated co-operation. While I may not be able to set forth 

 at this time much that is fundamentally new in this connection, 

 I wish to call your attention to some of the significant features 

 of this phase of pomology. 



