and it grows fast. I have
top-worked about forty varieties on the Virginia and some on Hibernal.
Mr. Cady was there and looked it over, Prof. Green was there and Mr.
Kellogg has been there a number of times--and I always ask them this
question: If they found any trees where the top had outgrown the stock?
I have never seen an instance where the top of the tree put onto a
Virginia crab outgrew the Virginia. I have some in my garden now where
the union is so perfect it takes a man with good eyesight to see where
it is.

[Illustration: A.J. Philips, West Salem, Wis. Photo taken in his
eighty-second year.]

Mr. Brackett: If you had Virginia trees twelve years old would you
top-work them?

Mr. Philips: Yes, sir, out towards the end of the limbs.

Mr. Brackett: Suppose the limbs were too big on the stock you are going
to top-work, how would you do then?

Mr. Philips: I practice cutting off those larger limbs and letting young
shoots grow. Mr. Dartt did a good deal of top-working, and he top-worked
large limbs. I told him he was making an old fool of himself, but he
wouldn't believe it. He would cut off limbs as large as three inches and
put in four scions and at the end of two years they had only grown eight
inches each. I have put in one scion in a Virginia limb that was about
3/4-inch in diameter, and had it that season grow eight feet and one
inch. That is the best growth I ever had.

The reason that my attention was called to the Virginia as being
vigorous was, when I attended the meeting of this society about thirty
years ago--I think it was at Rochester--Mr. A. W. Sias, who was an active
nurseryman and one of the pioneers of this society, offered a premium of
$5.00 for the best growth of a crab apple tree, and then, in order to
win the money himself (which he did), he brought in some limbs of a
Virginia that were six feet long that grew in one season; and I figured
then that a tree that could make that growth in one season was a
vigorous tree, which it is. Nothing can outgrow it, and that was one
reason why I commenced using it.

Mr. Brackett: I have one trouble in grafting the Wealthy to the Hibernal
on account of its making that heavy growth. I lost some of them by
blight on that account.

Mr. Philips: Which was blighted, the Hibernal?

Mr. Brackett: No, the Wealthy made such a big growth that it blighted. I
cut the top back and put grafts in, and they made a good growth, but
they blighted. Did you have a