SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 273 



fine — when we remove it to another locality, or plant it isolated in 

 another place. I have noticed some remarkable changes in seedling 

 strawberries by a change of its environment. 



(3.) That nearly all our fruit trees that have perfect or regular 

 flowers, such flowers are often polygamous in character, and non 

 self-fertilizing, and that often the pollen from another vaj-iety, or 

 even an allied species, is the most potent and congenial, and clearly 

 explains why our keeping-apples sometimes do not keep. 



(4.) That the facts here given are the exception, rather than 

 the rule, in all cases, except those given of the native plums, to 

 which we will now return for a few moments. So far, I have found 

 but one of these that that is fairly and regularly productive, when 

 not near other trees of the Almond family. 



So far as tried, all varieties of native plums are pollenized by 

 the Miner, and it by them. This plum seeins to have most potent 

 pollen seedlings, grown from seed of the Wild Goose, pollenized by it, 

 much more nearly resemble the Miner than they do the Wild Goose. 

 In fact, they show much less Chickasaw " blood " than those from 

 Miner seed, grown near Wild Goose. 



In the light of these facts I think it is evident that if we wish 

 full success with the native plums we should plant them in rows not 

 more than six feet apart in the row, with every third tree a Miner, 

 the rows twelve to twenty feet apart. 



That the almond family can be, in a measure, broken up by hy- 

 bridism, and the species run together and many new and valuable 

 points produced in that way, I have no doubt. 



The experimenter will meet with many set-backs and failures, 

 but we should keep on trying. In the line of discouragements, let 

 us glance at the so-called Blackman plum. This seems to be en- 

 tirely infertile with its own pollen, and it may be also with nearly 

 every variety and species of the almond family, and fully fertile 

 with only one or a few. It may be fertile only with the pollen of 

 certain peaches. It certainly did fruit quite freely in its first envi- 

 ronment, where it grew from seed. Now, to get a new race of hy- 

 brids between the plum and peach, we should find out what the 

 Blackman is fertile with, so as to get seedlings from it. We should 

 bud the peach on isolated trees of such varieties of all our species of 

 plums as are known to be infertile with their own pollen, and if we 

 get seeds, plant them, and not be discouraged if such seeds give us 

 seemingly perfect peaches or plums. Why should we strive for hy- 

 brids between the peach and plum? Simply because the plum tree 

 is hardy, and it has hardy fruit buds, and both species have fine, use- 

 ful fruits. As an example: I have a tree that one might eat of its 

 fruit, and critically examine the tree, and call it simply plain peach; 

 yet I have no doubt but what it is a good hybrid between the Snow 

 peach and Wild Goose or other Chickasaw plum. Why? Because 

 its blossoms are small, pure white; its pit nearly smooth, and it suck- 

 19 



