96 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



All planters know that from the same seed the greatest variations of form,, 

 color, and productiveness are constantly developing. 



Let us look for a moment at the treatment animals and plants receive at 

 all our fairs. An animal to be famous as a breeder, must be a great 

 prizetaker and must be passed upon by eminent judges and pronounced 

 perfect in all points. The first premium always means superiority overall 

 competitors for breeding or some special purpose. If a breeding animal 

 is a universal prizetaker, and the offspring is known to be superior, his 

 services command large sums and are sought for by the most skillful 

 breeders. The premium is awarded to the individual and not to the class- 

 to which it belongs. Now, look at the prizewinners in horticulture. 

 They go through the orchards, picking a specimen from this tree and that 

 until the collection is made. The tree that is loaded year after year with 

 the finest fruit, true to type, high in color, rich in flavor; its perfect foli- 

 age and smooth trunk indicating perfect health, and has stood the blast of 

 the severest winter, is entirely ignored in your awards. The same holds 

 true with a vine or plant standing among its commonplace fellows and 

 yielding the most magnificent fruit, veritable sweepstakes at your meet- 

 ings; but the vine or plant as individuals are entirely ignored. They die 

 in oblivion. I do not believe there is a commercial nurseryman in Amer- 

 ica today who seeks out these trees and plants and makes a special feature 

 of propagating from them. 



We admit there are some seedsmen who have practiced selection until 

 they really have become famous for their skill in improving known 

 varieties. In the case of fruits, I believe it is a universal rule of nursery- 

 men to take scions from nursery rows or any trees most convenient, of the 

 variety desired. Downing points out clearly that a graft from a diseased 

 or weak tree will transmit the disease or weakness to healthy stock, even 

 if grafted a dozen times in succession. I believe this has more to do with 

 the failure of orchards than any other cause. The truth is, the nursery 

 business has degenerated into a mere speculation, the winning man being 

 the one who can sell stock the cheapest. Year after year the strawberry- 

 grower goes to his fruiting beds and digs up plants between the rows 

 where they have stood unprotected, freezing, thawing, and heaving under 

 water, or dried up by the winds of winter until their constitutional vigor 

 is utterly destroyed. What is the result? Go into the field at harvest 

 time: the first few feet of a row are loaded with fine fruit, the next has 

 scarcely any, and then follows a vacancy where plants have not vitality 

 enough left to grow, and so on throughout the whole field, the soil, fertility, 

 and cultivation being all the same. Why is this? The mother plant from 

 which the first came was strong and vigorous; in the second instance the 

 vitality was lost, perhaps through the process of bud-variation or reversion, 

 or quite likely the plants had been formerly taken from an old, exhausted 

 bed, where seedlings had come up. I do not know of another grower 

 whose plants are not more or less mixed with seedlings or spurious plants. 

 No attention whatever is paid to selection. 



The power of bud variation has become generally recognized. Many of 

 our most valuable varieties are nothing but sports ( bud variations). Thus 

 the Golden Queen raspberry is a sport of the Cuthbert. During the past 

 season, I found in the boxes, while marketing, several berries partly red 

 and partly yellow, the red part being identical with the Cuthbert. I hope 

 the coming season to find the canes on which these berries grow, that I 

 may experiment with them. The Boston nectarine is conceded to be a 



