PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING 117 



' night and die before daylight comes, and you can not make them live 

 any longer. Now, is it not so with the Greening apple tree? We take a 

 sprout ott" from the original tree and put it into some other tree. It is 

 only a part of the original tree; it is not a new production, it is 

 onl}' a graft of the old cells from the original tree giowlng in some other 

 soil, growing as a parasite on another plant. By and by that cell life, 

 or whatever it is, it seems to me, must perish, as animal life does when 

 it has reached its proper length of time. Therefore I believe that the 

 Greening and all fruits we now know will eventually perish from the 

 earth. We speak of the NMlson strawberry, and we remember it with a 

 great deal of pleasure and love; yet its natural length of life must termin- 

 ate soon, if it is not already ended. So it will be with those that are in 

 their vigor today. J\v and by they will end, they must end; and a new 

 propagation must come from the seed, the only way to produce a new life, 

 in my opinion. 



Mr. Graham: We also have deterioration of grains, which are not pro- 

 duced by grafting or anything of that kind, but come directly from the 

 seed. We all remember when we used to grow the old Diehl wheat, for 

 instance. Does anybody grow it today? Those varieties have run out, as 

 we say, and yet they were produced directly from seed — not as part of 

 an original plant. 



Mr. Slayton: Just like the nations of the earth — they run out entirely. 



Mr. Graham : It has always seemed to me that a graft or a bud, while 

 the bud itself or the scion itself was a part of the old original tree or 

 plant, is supplied with a new life from the new root under the stock 

 upon which it is placed; and, so far as the life was concerned, it w'as a 

 new life produced from a seed. The life in that stock is what pushes, 

 forces, and sustains the graft or bud, that simply gives it its variation, its 

 quality of characteristic, while the life, the vital force, comes from the 

 new stock, the new seed. 



Mr. C. H. Chase: I confess that I know but very little about this matter 

 of fruitgrowing. I just came in as this subject of deterioration came up. 

 I have given a little attention to the subject of biology and to this matter 

 of deterioration. I would like to have some scientific reason given for 

 deterioration of plants. I know of none myself. Of course, there are 

 reasons for deterioration of animals, but in the case of propagation of 

 cell life from a graft, when you come down to the root of the question 

 there is no difference between the propagation of the plant from the graft 

 or from the seed. They are practically the same, they are the continuation 

 of the old cell life. Of course, we have in the lower forms of life the 

 propagation of life by division. The propagation of plant life, in the case 

 of grafting, is a propagation of the same kind. I know of no scientific 

 reason for deterioration of a plant in this manner of propagation. Per- 

 haps somebody here can give some light upon that question. I would like 

 to hear some good reason for it. 



Prof. Waite: It has been partly brought out here, but not very clearly, 

 that there are two methods of propagation of plants. One is the sexual 

 method, by seeds, in which the seedling is a distinct individual from its 

 parents, combining the qualities of two parents, the male and female, 

 and differing from either one of them more or less, as a distinct individual. 

 In plants as well as in animals we get the greatest possibility for varia- 

 tion by the sexual method of reproduction. That is where we get our 



