PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



43 



the buds from. Now. Mr. Chairman, if you can devise a ways and 

 means of starting this, it will be a step in advance. We talk this over 

 all the time and every year we have no trees to get them from. 



MR. BERWICK. * Mr. Chairman. I want to answer that challenge 

 more or less. I have a pear tree over fifty years old. a Winter Xelis 

 pear tree. That tree has averaged half a ton of pears every year for 

 the last fifteen years. I will take $50 a thousand for buds off that tree. 



MR. MASKEW. Now. who has a pippin or a bellflower that he can 

 give a pedigree on ? 



MR. FEMMOXS. As I said in my first remarks, arid I would like to 

 make it a little more explicit, in answering the question whether I 

 could give the pedigree of stock — and it would be apple stock — I could 

 not give the annual yield, but it is this way. For instance, within the 

 last ten years I have grafted over a hundred trees in my orchard to 

 what is known as the Delicious, and if you will just excuse me one 

 moment I want to make this addition to what I said a moment ago. 

 Many varieties of apples are susceptible of influence from a stock. 

 There are many other varieties that show but very little influence at 

 any time. There are a few varieties, though, that I am sure are very 

 susceptible to it. Now, to come back. I have grafted there a hundred 

 trees to the Delicious. That stock I had from the original tree that 

 grew near Des Moines, in Iowa, and I have grafted every one of my 

 trees from the original tree that I grew at home, which I consider yet 

 to be about as fine as any that I have ever seen. From that one tree I 

 have propagated over a hundred trees. A few out of that hundred, 

 for the past four or five years that I have been watching them, certainly 

 grew superior fruit even to my own original tree. They are brighter in 

 color, they are better in form, they are certainly more juicy and are a 

 finer apple in every way— a few of them there. The most of those trees 

 I can scarcely discover any change in any of their characteristics and 

 yet every tree has its individuality. You can see it in growth, in form 

 of fruit, its character in every way. just as I would come up to any of 

 you and see the character in your face. You can go up to your trees 

 and make neighbors of them, as every one should, take them into your 

 arms, talk to them — well. I got off my subject. Some of those trees 

 propagated from my original Delicious tree are dull in color, they are 

 very elongated, they are poor in quality. The tree the stock was put on 

 seems to be just as vigorous, just as full of life, and why there is that 

 difference I can't tell. That is what I want to get at. As far as 

 nurserymen are concerned, a good conscientious nurseryman, that will 

 use every endeavor to propagate the best trees ought to have a dollar 

 for every tree he propagates, and no one ought to begrudge double, 

 treble — aye. ten times the price the nurserymen are getting to-day. 

 It is money in your pocket, and it is the only salvation for California 

 fruit growers, to get down to the very best stock, of every variety, of 

 every kind of fruit that is grown here. With that there can be no 

 possible end to the development. 



AIR. RIXFORD. Before the gentleman sits down I want to ask him 

 if these young trees that he worked from were all of the same variety — 

 I mean the stocks. 



MR, FEMMONS. They were different varieties, some of them York 

 Imperial, and different varieties. 



