and grown under quite different conditions.  Considerable effort has been expended in the prosecution of this project, but up to the present time we have recorded no successful pollinations.  We have not as yet a very wide range of varieties, but as far as we have gone we have encountered complete sterility in the selfing within the individuals and in the attempt to use pollen of the same variety brought from a distance.  The unfortunate feature about all the hybridizing work with apples is the mongrel character of the plants on which we work.  We know nothing of the parentage of any of our varieties, and it seems quite useless to speculate on what the segregation of characters may be in crosses between different varieties.  A further discouraging feature in apple breeding is the long period required to get results from any particular cross.  Effort is being made to shorten this period by grafting scions of hybrid seedlings on dwarf stocks and growing the plants in pots.  This will help some, but at best the attainment of results is some distance in the future.  We are endeavoring to maintain a reasonably complete record of every step that is taken so that a complete history may be available for those who may later continue the work.

“In pursuing the projects as outlined above there are a number of minor problems that are receiving some attention:  such as the retention of the vitality of pollen, the period of receptivity, the seed production in hybrid fruits, and the time for and percentage of the germination of seeds.  On all of these points we are accumulating considerable information that it is hoped may be of some practical value.”—­Journal of Heredity.

Spraying the Orchard.

HON.  H. M. DUNLAP, SAVOY, ILLS.

I don’t know whether I am out of place with this topic of mine or not with a Minnesota audience, but I came through the exhibit rooms as I came up to the hall, and whether you spray or not you certainly need to, for I saw all sorts of fungous diseases upon your fruit.  I presume that these are not the poorest specimens you have—­very few people, you know, bring the poorest specimens they have to an exhibition place, Mr. President, and I presume that if these are the best you have the poorest must be pretty bad in the way of fungous diseases.

Of course, people don’t like to have their faults told them, but if we have anything the matter with us it is best for us to find out what the matter is and then get rid of it.  It is better than to do as many did in the commercial fruit-growing states a number of years ago about the San Jose scale, those that were interested in having that fact suppressed, or at least thought they were interested in having the fact suppressed that they had San Jose scale within the confines of their state.  They didn’t want that information to get out, so they didn’t discuss the matter of San Jose scale in their societies.