524- TJeport of the Department of Horticulture of the 



body, brain and conscience, to npbreeding and improving the 

 strawberry. I started right. Every year 1 have produced new 

 and more productive strains. I have found that some plants show 

 a strong tendency toward betterment. Proper breeding has en- 

 abled me to pi-oduce jDlants which for bearing qualities, vitality 

 and stamina cannot be equalled." 



Here, now, is a matter of tremendous importance to fruit- 

 growers and nurserymen. If varieties of fniits can be improved 

 by the selection of buds, cions and cuttings in propagation, the 

 sooner the present practices in nurseries are changed the better 

 for all who grow fruit. On the other hand if such selection of 

 propagating wood is not worth while, it is most unjust to tahoo 

 nurserymen who cannot give the ancestry of their stock. 



My own belief is that there is nothing to gain even though there 

 be a scintilla of truth in the claims of those who would have 

 nursery stock sold with a pedigree. I believe that we should be 

 doing great injustice to nurserymen, and indirectly therefore to 

 fruit-growing, should we require growers of trees to take buds or 

 grafts only from the bearing plants which seem to be superior 

 to other individuals of their kind. T believe that a fruitgrower 

 can spend his time to better advantage than in attempting to breed 

 fruit trees by bud selection. The rest of this paper is a defense 

 of the position I have just stated. 



At the very outset it must be pointed out that the seeming 

 analogy between plants propagated from buds and cions and 

 those grown from seeds has given a false simplicity to the facts 

 and has led many astray. Analogy is the most treacherous kind 

 of reasoning. We have here a ease in which the similarity of 

 properties is suggestive but the two things are wholly different 

 upon close analysis. In the case of seeds there is a combination 

 of definite characters in the offspring from two parents. Since 

 the combinations of characters handed down from parents to 

 children are never the same, individual seedlings from the same 

 two plants may vary greatly. On the other hand a bud or a graft 

 is literally a " chip of the old block," and while plants grown 

 from buds may vary because of environment they do not often 

 vary through heredity. Overwhelming objections can be urged 

 against pedigreed nursery stock from both the plant-breeder's and 

 the nurser3Tnan's standpoints. In the last ten years the whole 

 aspect of animal and plant breeding has changed in particulars 

 which must be set forth. 



