ON THE REWARDS OF PATIENCE 



proof of confidence that I purchased experiment 

 farms and sent far and wide for hybridizing mate- 

 rial at the very earliest moment when my financial 

 condition made such action possible. 



Nor should it be understood that I had by any 

 means entirely neglected experimental tests during 

 the period of my nursery experience. On the con- 

 trary, I had at all stages of this experience devoted 

 as much time as I could spare to tests in cross- 

 fertilizing and in selection among the various nurs- 

 ery products. These had served to give an expert 

 knowledge of the results that might be expected 

 from plant improvement. 



Moreover, tentative results had been attained 

 that gave support to the most sanguine expecta- 

 tions. 



Orchard and Garden Materials 



Indeed, it was largely as the result of these 

 experiments in selection that my nursery orchards 

 had come to be of such quality as to command 

 the attention of an ever widening circle of fruit 

 growers. 



I dealt with a very wide range of fruit-bearing 

 and flowering plants, and although no new plants 

 had been produced that could be compared with 

 those of a later period, my nursery had been 

 stocked with the very best existing varieties of 

 forty or fifty different groups of fruits and flowers, 



[117] 



