No one will contend that our present cultivated varieties of the apple meet all the requirements of apple culture in the United States. There are too few long-keeping varieties of high quality, especially for the south. The north requires trees better adapted to withstand the winter. The prairie states of the upper Mississippi valley need varieties capable of resisting both excessive cold and beat. In fact, our ordinary cultivated apples, which have been developed from Pyrus Malus, a native of the comparatively moist, mild and uniform climate of Europe, find themselves adapted to only a limited portion of this country, namely, from the upper Atlantic coast westward and southwestward to the prairie region, and to a portion of the northern Pacific slope. Elsewhere in the United States apple culture is precarious, or confined to few varieties, or favorable locations of limited area. The most important attempt to extend this area of successful apple culture has been the introduction of cul. tivated varieties of Pyrus Malus from Russia. These have proved partially successful on our northern borders east of the Great Lakes, but in the prairie soil and climate westward, they have failed so largely from blight, sun scald, and the lack of keeping qualities, that less is now expected of them than when they were first introduced.

These partial failures, have served to call the attention of fruit-growers to our native crab-apple as a possible source of varieties for cultivation.

The natural range of the American crab-apple at no point extends far beyond the present limit of successful apple growing in the United States, and it often comes short of that limit. But, as varieties of Pyrus Malus have been produced which are more hardy than the original species, so also it is hoped that the range of the American crab-apple may be somewhat extended by cultivation. That this extension of territory may be accomplished, westward at least, seems probable from the fact that nowhere in the United States is our crab-apple more abundant and fruitful than on the border of the prairie belt where the cultivated apples begin to fail. Certainly much may reasonably be expected, so far as adaptability to climate is concerned, from a species which in that respect is already so nearly all that can be desired. That our wild crab will lend itself readily to improvement may be inferred from its variability in the wild state. The size of tree, shape of leaf, size and shape of fruit differ much in different localities.

The tree, which reaches twenty-five or thirty feet in some portions of the Ohio valley, becomes a shrub less than ten feet high on the drier prairies west of the Mississippi. The leaves, which are usually deeply lobed, are sometimes found almost entire, resembling those of the cultivated apples. The narrow-leaved Pyrus angustifolia of the southern states is little more than a variety of the ordinary crab-apple of the north. The fruit of the ordinary crab-apple (Pyrus coronaria) which is usually depressed-globose, about an inch in diameter, is sometimes found of twice that size, and in the west an oval variety occurs, in the same localities as that of the usual form. On some trees the surface of the fruit is distinctly ribbed, on others it is uniform. The quality of our crab is certainly as good as the "austere, uneatable fruit" of the wild crab of the Old World, from which nearly all our cultivated varieties have sprung. Indeed, for making preserves, cider, and for some other purposes, the crab in its present wild state is highly valued, and was largely used by the settlers before cultivated fruits were introduced.

Its excess of acid is, in fact, one of its most promising features, as it is seldom that fruits gain in acidity by domestication, and there is little doubt that an increase in size will be accompanied, in some of the varieties, by a toning down of the excessive acidity.

But perhaps the most valuable character of the wild crab is its lateness of maturity, rendering it a probable source of winter varieties. The fact that the apple is practically the only long-keeping fruit we have, is alone a sufficient reason for efforts to increase the number of valuable late varieties adapted to all localities and uses.