129 



9; it may have been a tree which bore well one year and 

 then fell down ; this matter of record is absolutely necessary 

 before we can prove anything. The fact that one experi- 

 ment fails to reveal anything does not settle the issue at all, 

 because one individual tree might be better, due to local con- 

 ditions; it might not be that its value was due to inherent 

 power. It will take a considerable amount of work to set- 

 tle this question right, and the first thing is to prove that 

 differences occur and occur consistently. 



In regard to apples, probably no work is of longer dur- 

 ation than that undertaken by Professor Maeoun of the 

 Canadian Experiment Station. The number of trees in- 

 volved in this experiment is not large, but the records have 

 been maintained carefully for a period of ten years; also 

 the conditions under which the trees are grown are consid- 

 ered to be sufficiently uniform for experimental purposes. 

 The records for the period 1898 to 1908 are as follows. 



Wealthy, 17 trees in the test, varied from 59 gallons 

 gross yield to 154 gallons per tree, or 261 per cent. One of 

 the interesting things noted is that two-thirds of the trees 

 fell below the average in yield; in fact, this is the most 

 significant part of the whole record ; one-third of the trees 

 did over half the work. Also, it is of interest that the high- 

 est yielding trees took the lead the first year. We often 

 hear critics state that if we force the trees into bearing early 

 we may injure their vigor. The results so far do not indi- 

 cate such to be the case ; they do not indicate either in other 

 lines that power of reproduction necessarily means impaired 

 vigor. We may have impaired vigor followed by increased 

 reproduction, but the contrary is not thereby proven. 

 Many of our strongest and vigorous families, so far as re- 

 production is concerned, are strong and vigorous in other 

 lines and it w411 depend upon us to select those strains which 

 are not only vigorous in reproduction, but are also able tio 

 carry our their reproduction without entailing loss of vital- 

 ity. 



In the MciMahon white varietv there were 8 trees, which 



