448 Report of the Department of Horticulture of the 



enable plant breeders to shorten and improve their methods. 

 The old feeling of uncertainty is largely gone, the limitations of 

 breeding are better known, and the breeder can now take aim 

 where before he shot at random. While his tasks, in many re- 

 spects, are much more dilticult than those of the farmer, florist 

 and gardener, the breeder of fruits can take cheer in the fact 

 that almost nothing has been done in his field and that he has 

 practically a virgin soil to till. 



The discoveries of the past ten years make a foundation for 

 fruit-breeding but not much real building can be done until we 

 have had more experience in handling the material. With the 

 apple, in particular, because of the time it takes to obtain results, 

 a decade at the very least, it is important that workers give to 

 their fellow-workmen the results of experiments as rapidly as 

 precise and accurate information, be it ever so slight, is obtained. 

 It is with the hope of adding a little to the small store of apple- 

 breeding knowledge now in existence that we are reporting at 

 this time on an experiment in crossing apples at the Geneva 

 Station. Though the experiment has been running fourteen 

 years, this is still but a preliminary report. 



Before noting the behavior of the crosses to be discussed, it 

 seems necessary to give brief consideration to the origin of 

 varieties of apples. 



THE ORIGI^T OF VARIETIES OF APPLES. 



Apples, as we shall try to show later, are improved only by 

 the introduction of new varieties. That is, there is no evidence 

 to lead one to suppose that varieties are ever changed for better 

 or worse by selection or degeneration as cumulative processes. 

 Strains, or possibly varieties, rarely arise by selecting biul-muta- 

 tions but no one as yet has demonstrated that by continuous 

 selection new characters can be developed in apples. It, there- 

 fore, becomes highly imporant that we know how varieties of 

 apples originate. Fortunately, data are at hand upon which it 

 seems safe to generalize. The Apples of New York^ gives all 

 that can be learned of the histories of 698 standard sorts of this 

 fruit. How have these come into existence ? 



1 Beach, S. A. The Apples of Neto York. N. Y. Agrl. Ex. Sta. 1905 



