130 STATE HORTIOULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



others, for a long series of experiments, lasting many years perhaps. 

 But let us have these facts at our command, and then 1 answer-you, we 

 will have stepped upon the right plane for sure success in the future 

 in helping make horticulture a science. 



Why, let me ask, have we so much discussion of the short-lived 

 trees all over the West? Can it be whole-root or piece-root, budded 

 or grafted, cuttings or layers ? Verily I believe not ; but we must seek 

 the cause in some other direction. 



In planting our corn, we select not only the best kernels, but the 

 best ears, from the best and most prolific stalks, and we do this year 

 after year, always selecting for a particular type, until we reach our 

 ideal ; then we keep up to this ideal in every respect, and we have a 

 standard variety of corn that is of very great value to our farmers, and 

 this variety is fixed in its characteristics. 



How about the wheat that we saw ? Will not careful selection 

 and special cultivation and particular harvesting, year after year, give 

 us a variety that is far better than the seed we began with ? So of our 

 other grains and grasses ; we can select and feed for improvement, or 

 we can neglect and starve until we shall see failure. 



If then so much can be accomplished by selection and cultivation, 

 how much more can we improve by breeding, crossing, hybridizing, in 

 connection with careful selection and careful cultivation. If there is 

 any one field open for experiment greater than another, here is that 

 field opened up before us and inviting us to enter it. Shall we do it? 



Let us look into the green-house and the florist's work-shop. There 

 you will find special study of a plant, its good qualities, its defects, 

 where it can be improved, and you will find the florist crossing and re- 

 crossing, feeding and hybridizing, and cultivating, nursing and caring 

 for his spectal seedlings, until, behold, he has reached his ideal and 

 accomplished his end. I shall but point to the development of the 

 Eose and the Chrysanthemum for you to get the idea I wish to convey. 



But when you come to examine closely, this is just the beginning 

 of the idea I wish to convey to you as to our experiments. The fail- 

 ure in the florist's plan is in not working to establish a law of crossing 

 and hybridizing and breeding more than to get results from his experi- 

 ments in this direction. 



I want, therefore, to go farther into this deep and unexplored field 

 in the mysteries of nature. The breeder of the horse, the cattle or 

 the hog, knows that certain crosses and certain families and certain 

 strains will produce certain results; but the breeder of fruits has no 

 certain law to be guided by, and he cannot tell what the results will be 

 until the fruits have come into bearing; and this is just the point I 



