With these two northern pears as a foundation, I have endeavored to secure seedlings with fruit of large size and choice quality by hybridizing them with many of the best cultivated pears from Germany, France, England, Central Russia and Finland, as well as with some of the best varieties from the eastern pear-growing regions of the United States.  The work has been done mostly under glass in our fruit-breeding greenhouse.  Some of these fruits weighed one and one-fourth pounds.  Some of the resulting seedlings are subject to blight, while many have thus far shown immunity.  Since it is impossible to determine their relative immunity to blight except by distributing them for trial elsewhere, I sent out scions in the spring of 1915 of thirty-nine of these new seedlings to twenty-four men in several states.  These varieties are under restrictions until fruited and deemed worthy of further propagation.

[Illustration:  Crossing work in pears—­view in Prof.  N. E. Hansen’s Fruit-Breeding Greenhouse, State College, Brookings, S.D.]

I did not know whether immunity to blight is a possibility or only an iridescent dream, so I made no charge for these scions.  The only test of a pear seedling, the same as with the apple, is that of propagation.  Furthermore, if you have but the one seedling tree you may lose it by accident; whereas, if you send it out to a number of good men, you cannot lose it.

It should be distinctly understood that none of these new seedlings have borne fruit, but by what may be termed the projective efficiency of the pedigree I am satisfied that some of them will be valuable.  In like manner, a horse-breeder depends so much on the pedigree in his colts that he is willing to enter them in a race.  I believe something of value will come from this line of work.  I do know that my Pyrus Ovoidea is a pretty good, juicy little pear, a whole lot better than no pear at all.  I hope these seedlings will keep up their immunity to blight.  The original seedling trees certainly have had every chance to become affected by blight, as they were surrounded by blighting apple trees, crab-apple trees and pear trees, and no blight was cut out.  I thought this was the best way, since that is the test they will have in the farmers’ orchards when they go out from the nursery.

Hardy Pear Stocks.—­Now we are up against the problem of stocks for these hardy pears.  The quince is a standard dwarf stock, but it is not hardy enough for us.  Last spring I planted 12,000 seedlings of the various commercial pear stocks, including imported French pear seedlings, American grown French pear seedlings, Kieffer pear seedlings and Japan pear seedlings.  From one season’s experience I like the Japan pear the best.  The French pear seedlings, especially, did not do well.  The Japan pear stock is coming into high favor in recent years on our Pacific slope, where it is sometimes called the Chinese blight-proof stock.  The French pear