84 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



pollen supply. The extensive multiplication or division of impotent or 

 self-sterile individuals, and the setting of the resulting plants in large 

 blocks, have given us unfruitful orchards. If increasing amelioration 

 tends toward a sexual unbalance, it must follow that unfruitful orchards 

 are likely to increase unless intelligent mixed planting is brought to the 

 rescue. 



POINTS DEVELOPED BY DISCUSSION. 



Mr. WiLLARD: On James river, Virginia, were set 22,000 Bartlett pears 

 in a single block. This was after the war of the rebellion, Before that 

 time, in the same locality, an orchard of several hundred trees, including 

 one hundred Bartletts, had been wonderfully productive, yielding so much 

 as $10 per tree. Twenty-five years ago the big orchard was set, and it has 

 usually been a failure, producing only a few good crops. This well illus- 

 trates the truth of Prof. Bailey's position. 



Mr. Lyon: Are we to infer that Hill's Chili, and other varieties which 

 reproduce from the pit, are self -fertilizing? 



Prof. Bailey: Undoubtedly, but which is cause and which effect is 

 hard to say. 



Prof. Taft: Some old Roman writer tells us that there were found cer- 

 tain varieties of fig which were not self-fertilizers, and they were grafted 

 into others, or blooming branches of other sorts were hung in the limbs 

 of these, and fertilization so accomplished. 



Mr. Lyon: There are a few cases wherein fruits, grapes more particu- 

 larly, have produced seedless fruits; and it is an interesting question why 

 this is so. In 1889, a yard of Wyoming Red grapes in western New York, 

 had such fruits, and investigation led me to attribute it to non-fertilization. 

 Some plants do regularly set fruits which are seedless, Zante currants, 

 for instance; and tomatoes and forcing cucumbers have been often pro- 

 duced which were solid and seedless. 



Prof. Bailey exhibited a strawberry plant and blossoms, and said that 

 "button" berries or knotty ones are caused by non-fertilization. One- 

 sided apples may also be attributed to this cause. He did not think that 

 pollenation of the strawberry changes either the size or quality; still, he 

 might be wrong about this, for but little is as yet demonstrated. He 

 would not plant more than two rows of self-sterile strawberries together. 

 The orchards of Ellwanger & Barry, and those of Mr. Willard, are all 

 mixed up, as to varieties, and are regularly fruitful on this account. The 

 peach seems less liable to failure from this cause, than most other fruits; 

 still, there may be something in the idea, even as to the peach. 



