[229] Thomas Am. Fruit Cult. 493. 1897.
[230] Joseph L. Normand was born at Marksville, Louisiana, January 14, 1853. He was educated in the public schools of the parish in which he lived. After leaving school he followed the vocation of a printer for a number of years, though from childhood horticulture had been an avocation with him. Before middle life he gave up office work to begin actively the growing of nursery and fruit trees. His work in horticulture early developed into plant-breeding and towards the close of his life all of his energies were devoted to the production of new types of plants. In his plant-breeding Mr. Normand became noted as a hybridizer and a great majority of the fruits and ornamentals sent out by him were hybrids. Among these may be named the Carnegie Orange, a hybrid more or less frost resistant, which he obtained by crossing the Louisiana Sweet Orange with Citrus trifoliata. Mr. Normand also devoted much time to the testing of figs and sent out the New French Fig, selected from some seventy varieties which he had grown. Pears, apples and plums received his attention and in all these fruits he developed original types by hybridization. Possibly his most meritorious work with the plum has been in testing Triflora and native varieties, although he has sent out not a few hybrids of this fruit most of which, however, do not thrive in northern climates. Mr. Normand did for his region what Kerr, Munson, Terry, Lord and Williams have done in other parts of North America in testing plums. All who knew Mr. Normand say that in this day of commercialism he worked almost wholly for the love of plants—to improve them for his fellow fruit-growers regardless of the money to be made in his calling. He lived and worked in a region where his achievements were at first little known and little understood, quite content to work for his work’s sake, but in the end he gained distinction among the fruit-growers of his State and attracted the attention of plant-breeders all over the United States. Mr. Normand died in the town of his birth, April 17, 1910.
[231] A. L. Bruce, whose name appears so frequently in the pages of The Plums of New York as a breeder of native plums, is of Scotch descent. His father, however, came from Illinois to Texas, settling at Basin Springs, Grayson County, in 1845, where he planted the first orchard in that part of Texas. The son, subject of this sketch, was born October 6, 1861, and was educated in the common schools at Basin Springs, Texas. His work in growing and breeding trees began in his youth, for in 1877 he established himself as a grower and collector of native plums to which he added many of the Triflora varieties that were soon after introduced from Japan. Mr. Bruce’s first definite problem in breeding plums was to find extra early and extra late sorts for Texas; his Six Weeks, Red May, Dayton and several other plums were the results of these efforts. In 1902 Mr. Bruce moved to Donley County in the Panhandle of Texas from which place he has sent out and continues to send out Triflora, native and hybrid plums of unusual merit. Beside working with plums Mr. Bruce is a breeder of peaches, pears, raspberries, dewberries and apples, to all of which fruits he has made more or less notable contributions. Mr. Bruce is still in the prime of life, has many plant-breeding problems projected and his work promises much for horticulture in the Southwest and in the country at large.
Transcriber’s Notes
Illustrations were relocated to correspond to their references in the text, therefore page numbers listed in the INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS are not accurate anymore.
The illustration “October” was apparently omitted from the book (three different copies checked).
Obvious printer errors corrected and inconsistent spellings have been kept, including inconsistent use of hyphen, accents, capitalisation, and proper names.
Index entries that do not match their referenced text corrected (except where the text is an obvious printer error). Index entries that refer to non-existent text have been deleted.