58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



shade and shape, from the black gloLular, to the light and 

 oblong or pear-shaped. 



Since these varieties are not permanent, it follows that there 

 is no certainty that the seed will produce a plant which will be 

 similar to that from which the seed was taken. We cannot 

 depend upon having a Baldwin apple from the seed of the 

 Baldwin. The product may, indeed, be superior to its parent, 

 or it may be inferior, but it will seldom be precisely similar to 

 it. The seed of the black cranberry might produce the black, 

 as it sometimes does. The same circumstances which gave 

 such peculiar characteristics to the fruit from which the seed 

 was taken, would probably give it the same. It is always safe 

 and wise to select the best seed of the best fruit, of every 

 description, to plant. 



The question has often been asked, whether the two varie- 

 ties, when brought together, would injure each other, or in 

 other words, whether, if the black and the common oblong 

 cranberry of the country, were transplanted into the same 

 piece, and placed in the immediate vicinity of each other, the 

 fruit of each would have all its original distinctive character- 

 istics ? If both varieties of vines ran together, as they natu- 

 rally would, so that the dust or pollen of one would fall on 

 and fructify the other, it is very probable that the fruit would 

 have some of the characteristics of each variety. The inferior 

 cranberry would, perhaps, be improved, and it is possible that 

 the fruit so produced might be better than cither alone would 

 have been. Such is, to a great extent, the case with all acci- 

 dental varieties of fruit ; as when a variety of Indian corn, for 

 example, is so situated that its pollen falls upon other varieties 

 of the same grain, the effects are invariably seen in the differ- 

 ent character given to the fruit of that on which it falls. 



But, if our common American cranberry were intermixed 

 with the small, or European cranberry, in the manner above 

 described, the same amalgamation probably would not take 

 place, from the fact that the species is different. There might 

 possibly be an intermixture, but it would be very unlikely to 

 occur. 



The Cranberry Worm. — There is an insect which attacks 

 the cranberry. Its history and habits are not yet fully known, 



