AMERICAN GRAPES . 35 > 



nating are but recombinations of the characters in the parent — the com- 

 bination is new but not the characters. Thus one parent of a hybrid 

 grape may contribute color, size, flavor and practically all of the char- 

 acters of the fruit and the other parent vigor, hardiness, resistance to 

 disease and in general the characters of the vine. Or, of course, these 

 and the other items in the make-up of the grape may be intermingled 

 in any mathematically possible way. New characters probably appear 

 as variations, and of these plant-breeders now recognize two kinds. 



Nothing is more certan than that all offspring differ from their 

 parents in many details — individual variation. Plant-breeders have 

 long believed that by selecting desirable variations we have an efficient 

 means of improving plants just as evolutionists have held and many 

 continue to hold that evolution goes forward by means of natural selec- 

 tion from these variations. But there is a new school, headed by the 

 Dutch botanist, De Vries, who believe that these variations do not pro- 

 duce anything new, but that they always oscillate around an average, 

 and if removed from this for a time, they show a tendency to return to 

 it. Whether the orthodox Darwinians or the De Vriesians are right 

 does not matter here. The point is that the fluctuating variations of 

 individuals, upon which Darwin chiefly founded his principle of natural 

 selection, cut but a small figuie in the breeding of grapes. It is not 

 certain that such, variations are heritable, nor whether they are capable 

 of cumulative increase generation after generation, and, besides, as we 

 have seen, selection must be consistent and persistent for too long a 

 while to make it effective with grapes. 



Evolution and plant-breeding have taken a fresh start through the 

 recent amplification by De Yries of the theory that marked changes 

 take place in plants through mutations, or characters which arise in a 

 plant at once, with a single leap, and are stable from the time they 

 arise. If this theory hold for grapes, it may be that there is a possi- 

 bility of absolutely new characters arising in this fruit. It is well 

 known that bud-sports, which in most cases must be called mutations, 

 now and then arise in grapes. But these mutations have not as yet 

 played an important part in producing new varieties. Not more than 

 two or three of the fifteen hundred sorts now under cultivation are sus- 

 pected of having arisen in this way. Until the causes of these muta- 

 tions are known and they can be produced and controlled, but little can 

 be hoped for in the amelioration of grapes through mutations. 



Hybridization, then, has been and continues to be the chief means 

 of domesticating grapes. " Fluctuations " and " mutations," produced 

 other than by hybridizing, are too vague as yet for the grape-breeder to 

 lay hands on. Even should the theory of De Vries be true, that noth- 

 ing new — in the strict sense of the word — comes except through muta- 

 tions, with more than a score of species of grapes, each with manifold 

 distinct characters, all capable of fluctuating variations, there are many 



