PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 27 



your annual meetings. I have for all those years read the reports of 

 your annual meetings so faithfully that I have become well acquainted 

 with all the growers of California, exceedingly well acquainted with 

 them by name, and I am glad indeed to be able to be here to-day, where 

 I may possibly take some of these growers by the hand and look into 

 their faces, here in this city of Marysville. Just think of it ! In Marys- 

 ville and Yuba City, names hallowed in the romance of days ! When I 

 was reading these reports of your annual meetings, I had never hoped 

 to be asked to address any of your meetings. I thought, "If I could 

 only be there at some time, ' ' but it never occurred to me to be asked to 

 address you, because that was beyond me, an Oregonian in the back- 

 woods; but I am happy to have been asked and happy to be standing 

 before you to-day, even if I compel you to listen to a very elementary 

 essay on horticulture. You know, in Oregon, at our State meeting, each 

 one comes along with a little primer of horticulture and recites his 

 A B C of horticulture, and recites it with great seriousness and some- 

 times with sobriety, and I will have to do the same — that is, as to the 

 seriousness. We have not got out of the rut. We know our A B C's, 

 but the E F G's are beyond us; so it will be a very elementary paper 

 on the every-day happenings in an Oregon apple orchard to which you 

 will have to listen. I would like to say further, that I do not wish to 

 be understood as attempting to speak with any semblance of authority, 

 any semblance of scientific authority, upon any subject, any abstruse 

 question of horticulture, for I am only a layman, and I wish to leave 

 all those deeper problems to deeper thinkers. 



APPLE-GROWING IN THE WILLAMETTE VALLEY. 



By M. O. LOWNSDALE, of Lafayette, Okegon. 



The growing of apples in the Willamette Valley was one of the first 

 industries undertaken by the Oregon pioneers. To these adventur- 

 ous souls, these crusaders to a holy land, the great valley with its fertile 

 soils, abundant moisture, and delightful temperature seemed the natural 

 home of fruits that were the joys of their childhood days, The planting 

 of apples resulted— at first in a tentative way by the trial of seedlings. 

 The remarkable productiveness of these seedlings was everywhere 

 noted and soon led to the introduction of grafted trees. In the fall of 

 1847 the first grafted apple trees were planted in the Willamette Valley 

 and were the first grafted trees to be planted on the Pacific Coast. 

 You know we had several years' advantage of you in the matter of 

 immigration from Eastward and our tree plantings antedated yours 

 somewhat. These trees thrived. The beauty, the lusciousness, the. per- 

 fection of form, color and size of their fruit gave to Oregon a wondrous 



