EXPEKTMENTS IN THE HYBRIDIZATION OF CerEAT-S. 425 



ments paternal in form, but is in great measure due to the 

 assiduous labors of sagacious hybridizers. On the fruits of 

 those labors have we been paying a premium. But now we 

 have begun to send back, to cancel our debt, the product of 

 our own hybridizations. 



From the president's chair of the American Pomological 

 Society, Mr. Wilder, himself one of our earliest and fore- 

 most hybridizers, omits no opportunity to urge upon the hor- 

 ticulturists of America the importance of the practice of 

 this art. " Plant the most mature and perfect end of the 

 most hardy, vigorous and valuable varieties ; and, as a 

 shorter process, insuring more certain and happy results, 

 cross or hybridize your best fruits, flowers and vegetables," 

 he urges repeatedly. 



The difficulties which oppose the artificial fecundation of 

 the cereals, may doubtless be assigned as the reason why 

 these plants, although holding the very first rank in respect 

 to usefulness to man, have been so little made the subjects of 

 experiment by the hybridist. Probably nearly all the lim- 

 ited number of varieties of wheat, or oats, or rye, or barley, 

 which we possess, are of accidental origin, if we may so 

 designate those results which were produced by the opera- 

 tion of natural causes, all without the intentional interven- 

 tion of man. New forms appearing in his grain fields have 

 caught the attention of the farmer, have been preserved, 

 propagated and disseminated. Possibly some of these new 

 forms may have sprung from cross-fertilization, effected 

 under some rare combination of circumstances, by the 

 agency of the wind, or of insects. Some of them may have 

 been due to that freak of nature in reproduction which we 



