SELECTING THE TREES 29 



tries to sell you such trees you can decide at 

 once that he is a good man to avoid. 



I am not asking that you take my word en- 

 tirely on this question. There are crooked 

 nurserymen who will assure you that I know 

 nothing about the subject. They will offer 

 proof that they know all about pedigreed trees 

 and may even show you orchards grown from 

 their trees to prove that they are right. Never- 

 theless, I am warning you and if you get 

 " stung" for high prices and get ordinary trees 

 in the end, don't blame me. 



Further, let me tell you about an experiment 

 that was carried on by my friend, Joe A. Bur- 

 ton. Mr. Burton wanted to find out for him- 

 self if there was anything in this talk about 

 pedigreed trees. He felt about it just as I do, 

 but he wanted to know. He has a particularly 

 well developed bent for wanting to know things 

 anyhow. 



Consequently he secured scions from a tree 

 of a certain variety that produced very fine 

 large apples, just such a tree as the pedigree 

 nurserymen would select to grow their pedi- 

 greed trees from. Then he hunted around and 

 found another tree of the same variety, but this 

 tree produced only small, knotty, misshapen 

 fruit, a poor subject for the eugenic nursery- 

 man. Scions from these two trees were grafted 

 in the top of a third tree. Their nourishment 



