The other way of obtaining hardiness is by crossing a tender variety with a hardy one.  When we cross the native plum with the Japanese plum, we obtain seedlings that combine in a fair measure the hardiness of the native plum with the size and quality of the Japanese plum.

In many states of the Union the question of varieties for commercial orchards has been to a large degree settled.  There is always room for a new apple, but for commercial purposes the varieties already in cultivation are sufficiently satisfactory as to size, color and quality as well as in keeping and shipping capacity.  So the main effort in their horticultural societies is along other lines, such questions as marketing, packing, spraying, insects, fungi and orchard management.  But in this region the winter apple question is still a vital one.

Some promising winter apples have appeared recently, and it remains to be seen whether they will stand up under the next test winter.  They are certainly satisfactory in size, color, quality and keeping capacity.

The greatest question now presents itself in planting apple seed.  What variety shall I choose?  Some pedigrees may be like a blind alley, they will lead us nowhere.  The commercial apples of the East and of the Pacific Coast are the survivors of millions of apple seedlings raised by immigrants from Western Europe during the past three centuries.  They survived because they were the best.  From time to time very good varieties are super-ceded by new ones that appear.  From the ashes of millions of seedlings will arise, Phoenix-like, the creations that will dominate our future prairie pomology.  Here in the Northwest thousands of farmers have already determined to a considerable extent what we may expect from planting the seed of certain standard varieties.

[Illustration:  The Waneta plum.  A promising variety originated and introduced by Prof.  N. E. Hansen.]

Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa are full of seedlings of the Duchess.  Some of the best are Okabena, Peerless, Patten’s Greening, Milwaukee, Dudley, Pewaukee.  A very large amount of Wealthy seed has been planted, especially in Minnesota.  Many of these give promise, but in none do we appear to have obtained the true winter-keeping capacity.  The Wealthy has given us the Lord’s L, Evelyn, Lyman Sweet, Perfect and many more, observed at Minnesota state fairs from time to time.  The Malinda has given us in the Perkins’ seedlings a number of promising new varieties that evidently are true winter keepers.  The fact that they appear hardy may come from the fact that the original orchard had hardy varieties, like the Duchess, standing near the Malinda.  From the experience with these three varieties I would like to draw the conclusion that in order to get winter apples we should save the seed of winter apples, but it would not be safe to draw this conclusion without further experiments.  There is an immense number of Ben Davis seedlings in Missouri and adjoining states, but none appear to have come into extensive commercial notice except the Black Ben Davis and Gano.  But as near as I can learn we cannot obtain real hardiness from this line of descent, unless the Ben Davis in the mother orchard is standing near varieties like the Duchess.