THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 



PETER M. GIDEON'S SEEDLINGS. 



In one of tbe papers read at the Winter Meeting, and tlie discus- 

 sion following, reference was made to the new varieties of apples 

 propagated b3' Mr. Gideon from the experimental fruit farm in 

 Excelsior, Minnesota. As giving some idea of this work we take 

 the following from Mr. Gideon's report to the Minnesota Horticul- 

 tural Society : 



"Twenty-three years ago I planted a few cherry crab seeds 

 obtained of Albert Emerson, Bangor, Maine, and from those seeds 

 I grew the Wealthy apple ; in seven years it fruited, and that fruit 

 convinced me that the true road to success was in crossing the Sibe- 

 rian crab with the common apple, and on that line I have operated 

 ever since, with results surpassing my most sanguine anticipations. 

 I did not suppose that in the short space of sixteen years, the time 

 since the Wealthy first fruited, that I should have more than 

 twenty first-class apples, as good as the world can produce, in suc- 

 cession from the first of August to March, and in hardiness of trees 

 surpassing all known varieties of the common large apple. But it 

 is done, and in the doing the problem is solred as to what to do 

 and how to do it, with the material at hand with which to attain 

 yet greater results. At the outset it was test and try ; but now 

 that the problem is solved, it is onward, with great results certain. 



"When I say we have twenty first-class apples, that does not in- 

 clude all that are worthy of cultivation by any means. And now, 

 with such results, and only a few thousand trees fruited at the end 

 of sixteen years, what may we not expect at the end of the next 

 sixteen years, with 20,000 or 30,000 choice, selected trees from the 

 very best of seed, which are not yet fruited, and the seed of over 

 one hundred bushels of choice apples planted this fall, all to fruit in 

 a few years ? 



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