
          4.  [IV]

However, as the various varieties were harvested by Mr. Brunk
from season to season, he sent samples of each to my office and it
was on these that I made my observations.

My time being already overcrowded with other official matters,
I might be able to study the samples the day they were delivered;
it might be several days of a week before I could get to them.
Thus my studies were often made hurridly [hurriedly], and frequently in a very
fragmentary and incomplete manner.  I had no time for making full
detailed descriptions, but at the best only rather superficial
characterizations, and equally little for straightening out problems
of identification, varietal mix-ups, and other like matters.  The 
summation of my notes on a variety, even if they covered several
seasons was therefore only a statement of gross characters, too
often of little real value.

I apologize to anyone who may ever try to refer to these notes
for their mixed-up, chaotic, unorganized condition.  They should be
organized and copied.  But the probability of their usefulness is
too much in question and the infrequency with which they will be
referred to in the future,  if at all, renders the time, labor, and
other costs in doing so unjustified.

The reasons for the chaotic condition of the notes are several,
but mainly it is due to the inherent difficulty (unless great pains
are taken) of taking a batch of notes on a subject made over several
seasons and coordination and arranging the various points covered
in different years,  in a thoroughtly systematic order.  This is the
basic trouble.  Then as the compilation progressed, the idea of
making the notes as complete as records from all sources would
permit grew on the compiler.  Items which were omitted at first
were later included and had to be inserted wherever there might be
unoccupied space on the page;  or, if added on another page the
item might be still farther out of its logical order.

In one or two instances after it was thought that all available
data had been included more notes were found.  Specifically this
was the case with some of the notes on blossoming.  Going over the
notes first at hand on some varieties there appeared to be no records
on blossomng, hence a line was drawn diagonally across the
space where blossoming records should be inserted to show that such
records were missing and not just overlooked.  Then later, when records
were found they were inserted without that line be erased.
Thus in some cases it may appear as if blossoming records were inserted,
then crossed out, when in fact it was the other way around and the
records are to stand.

Another regrettable feature is the great number of mixed-up and
unidentified varieties that appear in the notes.  In the handling of so
large a number of varieties it was almost inevitable that some mistakes
would occur.   The large number of sources from which scions were received
has been mentioned.  The varieties in Mr. Irwin's private
nursery were assembled from many sources; scions were cut from each
variety, sent to Arlington Farm, there propagated, grown in the nursery,
        