842 Popular Editions of Station Bulletins of the 



For this reason, much careful work must be done with any of 

 the species or varieties man uses or desires to use, in breeding. 

 With the apple, as already indicated, so little breeding work has 

 been done that we know almost nothing of the inheritance of char- 

 acters ; therefore the information secured from work at this Sta- 

 tion in making crosses between eleven varieties of apples is pub- 

 lished at this time, though admittedly incomplete. 



These breeding experiments were begun be- 



Handicaps in fore Mendel's laws of breeding were familiar 



apple breeding. to more than a few scientists, and were not 



made with any purpose of testing those laws. 

 Since we know so little of the origin of the varieties used we are 

 handicapped at the start in interpreting the results by the new 

 laws ; as we can not tell whether we are working with pure char- 

 acters, separated out by running through two or more generations, 

 with dominant characters showing in the first cross and hiding 

 their recessives of the Mendelian pairs, or with " blended " char- 

 acters. It is very probable, however, that, with regard to many 

 characters, the apple varieties of to-day are themselves crosses ; so 

 that when we again cross these varieties, some characters split up 

 into pure dominants and recessives and give us a clue to the trans- 

 missibility of the parental characteristics. The only way this can 

 be proved, though, is by growing large numbers of seedlings from 

 self -fertilized seeds of both parent and descendant varieties — a 

 matter of great difficulty in the apple, which does not readily self- 

 fertilize and, when it does, appears to give seedlings of inferior 

 vigor. Work along this line will give res-ults of scientific value 

 and should, logically, precede presentation of data or conclusions 

 regarding the inheritance of characters. Such work is in progress 

 at the Station, hindered by the apple's opposition to self-pollina- 

 tion ; but as it must be at least ten or twelve years before trees of 

 the second generation are in bearing it seems best to give, now, the 

 practical results of the apple crosses made, under Prof. S. A. 

 Beach's supervision, in 1898 and 1899. 



