ISTew York Agricultural Experiment Station. 403 



which is too important to let pass without a word. This is the 

 resistance made by strong, able-bodied, well-fed, healthy, vigorous 

 plants. Any and all of the things that contribute to highest vigor 

 in a plant add to its capacity to resist or throw off disease and the 

 reverse condition predisposes to the contraction of disease. There 

 is no experimental evidence in confirmation of the statement just 

 made but it has so much observational foundation that it may be 

 put in positive words. 



SEEDLESS APPLES. 



Periodically the imagination of fruit-growers is excited by re- 

 ports of new and wonderful seedless apples. But as yet, the seed- 

 less apple is a chimera from the standpoint of utility. The fruits 

 are usually very deficient in size, color or quality — the latter in 

 particular. Most of them are also abnormal in other respects than 

 in fewness of seeds. In many varieties of apples seedless indi- 

 viduals are now and then found. On the other hand there seems 

 to be no known case in which all of the apples in seedless varieties 

 are lacking in seeds. 



Seedless apples are not new. They were known to the Greeks 1 

 and the Romans. They have been described time and time again 

 since Pliny 2 wrote of Roman agriculture. Descriptions of these 

 outbreaks of Nature's usually orderly course are so common in 

 both botanical and horticultural books that there is no need to re- 

 peat them even to the general public who scarcely more than 

 yesterday had dinned into their ears tales of a marvelous seedless 

 apple which led to a full discussion of the whole subject. The 

 commercial history of the apple just referred to was so unsavory 

 that it would seem wisest to keep discreetly silent on this subject 

 for some time to come. But fruit-growers, even those to whom 

 the seedless apple is a sore point, can bear the statement of a few 

 facts. 



Seedlessness is a permanent and a valuable character in many 

 fruits. Thus, there are seedless varieties of the banana, barberry, 



i Theophrastus. De caus. pi. Lib. 3, c. 23. 

 2 Pliny. Lib. XV, c. 15. 



