New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 451 



tlirougli selection. The experiment in hand has to do only with 

 crossed apples and the behavior of these trees, since we have 

 almost no data from the past regarding crossed apples, should be 

 of especial interest to apple growers and breeders. 



If it be true that the apple is to be chiefly improved by cross- 

 ing, apple breeding becomes a comparatively simple though not 

 necessarily an easy matter. The blossoms are readily interpol- 

 linated, the seeds grow as readily as those of vegetables or flowers, 

 and there remains but to select the tree of promise and to 

 propagate it. A little manual skill, knowledge of what exists and 

 of what is wanted in varieties of apples, patience and time, with 

 land to grow large numbers of seedlings, added to definite knowl- 

 edge of the laws of plant breeding, seem to be the requisites for 

 breeding apples by crossing. 



Varieties of apples from mutations. — Four varieties in The 

 Apples of New York, are said to have come from sports. These 

 are: Olympia, Banks, Collamer and Red Russet. 



The evidence regarding these varieties needs to be examined 

 critically. Olympia was sent out as a " sport from the Baldwin," 

 an '' improved Baldwin." Four trees in a Baldwin orchard 

 near Ol^mipia, "Washington, produced larger and better colored 

 fruits than the neighboring plants. Cions seems to reproduce 

 the large size and high color, and the novelty was called the 

 Olympia. At this Station, the Olympia from cions taken from 

 trees grown from the originals, is the Baldwin. \Ye are led to 

 conclude that the variation in the trees in Washington was due 

 to some unusual environmental condition and that there is no 

 ground for calling it a " sport," a " mutation," or a new variety. 



Banks is given as a bud-mutation of Gravenstein differing 

 from its parent in being bright red, less ribbed, more regular 

 in shape and a little smaller. This variation appeared on a 

 branch of a Gravenstein tree in the orchard of C. E. Banks, 

 Berwick, ISTova Scotia, and is now widely grown about the place 

 of its origin. Gravenstein seems to be productive of red varia- 

 tions, Oberdieck\ Gaucher" and Leroy^ having described varia- 

 tions similar to Banks in Europe. More recently another one 



lOberdieck, Deut. Obst. Sort. 1881, 

 2 Gaucher, Pom. Prak. Obst. 1894. 

 3Lerov, Diet. Pom. 1877. 



