SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 271 



Is there any proof of this, or is it mere theory. The best of 

 proof — positive proof; for Mr. Munsou says he has produced such 

 hybrids by manipulation, and has them now growing. As further 

 proof, let anyone take any of these very early so-called peaches, and 

 examine them critically, and he will find the fruit a complete min- 

 gling of the Chickasaw plum and the peach. Their pits are so differ- 

 ent, all of them, from the normal peach pit, that one can readily 

 select them all out if mixed with a lot of regular peach pits. They 

 are nearly smooth, like a plum pit; also rounder, lighter in color. 

 The pulp of the fruit is nearer like the plum than the peach, etc., 

 etc. 



Now a few words on the power, or prepotency, of the polren in 

 changing the fruit that is to follow in a greater or less degree, and 

 I will leave you. 



I have seen the flowers of one branch — a graft of a large, fall, 

 yellow Russet, that had been inserted in a Willow Twig apple tree, 

 in an isolated block of Willow Twig trees, change every apple on the 

 tree in which the graft grew, and on the six trees nearest to it, and 

 more or less, change the fruit for five trees, or over one hundred feet 

 in one direction, probably toward which direction the wind was 

 blowing when the pollen was ripe. Some of the apples that grew 

 on the Willow Twig were as perfect Russets, in every particular, as 

 any that grew on the Russet graft; others showed every gradation 

 between the two varieties, possible. The Willow Twig trees within 

 the influence or reach of this pollen, matured from two to four 

 times as much fruit as the other trees in the block. 



I made careful observations of a case where a Domine apple tree 

 stood in a block of isolated Willow Twigs. I could notice no differ- 

 ence at all in the fruit on the surrounding Willow Twigs, except that 

 it was a shade larger and very much more abundant than on any 

 other trees in the orchard. In two cases where Willow Twig was in 

 fruit next Jonathan, and another Roman Stem, such Willow Twigs 

 were exceedingly productive. When growing near Jannet, which 

 blooms some days after the Willow, there was no abnormal increase 

 of fruit, very strongly, to me at least, Jonathan, next Willow, 

 showed more fruit. 



A row of Rambo, next one of Maiden's Blush, for years had 

 its fruit changed in color and form like Maiden's Blush, otherwise 

 unchanged. 



150-trees of Yellow Bellflower, that were unproductive, were 

 grafted with Red June and Red Astrachan, each tree partially. So 

 soon as the grafts bloomed the Bellflower began to bear good crops; 

 this apple is generally nearly seedless. The fruit produced after 

 grafting had abundant, plump seed, exactly like the grafts; no other 

 being observable in the Bellflower fruit. We at one time grafted 

 Rhode Island Greening in the tops of about twenty strong, vigorous 

 seedling apple trees; the grafts were all taken from one tree. When 



