!N"ew York Agricultural Experiment Station. 523 



following quotations from three horticultural authorities in the 

 experiment stations of the country. 



First liorticulturist. — " We know that no two trees in any 

 orchard are alike, either in the amount of fruit which they bear 

 or in their vigor and habit of growth. Some are uniformly pro- 

 ductive, and some are uniformly unproductive. We know, too, 

 that scions or buds tend to reproduce the characters of the tree 

 from which they are taken. Why should a fruitgrower take 

 scions from a tree which he knows to be unprofitable ? " 



Second horticulturist. — " The pedigree idea rests upon the 

 most important principle of plant breeding — that of selection. 

 If all other plants are being improved by selection, and the im- 

 provements are handed down to their offspring, why not the 

 fruitgrower's plants ? " 



Third horticulturist. — " My plan would be for a nursery to 

 go ahead and have pedigreed trees of their own selections, which 

 are known to produce good crops of highly colored fruit, market- 

 able sizes, good quality, right straight along." 



In the light of present knowledge, it is possible that those 

 who gave utterance to these expressions might now repudiate them. 

 They were, however, the beginning of the " pedigreed " stock 

 movement and have given the vocabulary, as well as the idea, to 

 growers of pedigreed stock. The following taken from advertise- 

 ments of three nurseries offering pedigreed stock give an idea 

 of what will come in advertising should pedigreed stock become 

 the vogue. 



First nurseryman. — " My system of pedigreeing known fruit- 

 age prepotency is revolutionizing the orchard industry and making 

 fortunes in fruit growing sure and certain. Why gamble with 

 trees grown from scions cut from trees which have never borne 

 profitably? We are the only nursery in the world which grows 

 certain pedigreed parentage exclusively — by which method we 

 can give you the actual blood record of every tree sold you." 



Second nurseryman. — "It is a decided advantage to planters 

 to secure nursery stock propagated from the finest prize-winning 

 trees in the West. Quality and Pedigree certified under affidavit.'' 



Third nurseryman.. — " Bigger crops of better strawberries grow 

 from pure-bred plants because for 21 years I have devoted myself, 



