PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING 127 



breediu*^' animals. As plants j^iow, the gcrni i>lasni changes. It is so in a 

 man. As the body grows old the life seems to gi-ow morbid, or at least 

 become inactive, and this may result from many causes. The only thing 

 M'e can do is to discard the bad variety and get one that grows better. 

 It is true that nine tenths of our really desirable plants are discovered 

 by accident. Mr. Mason has discovered a berry growing in the woods. 

 He does not know where it came from. It probably had been a seedling, 

 because of its wide variation, and he thinks he has something lliat is 

 really worth oti'ering to the public, and he i»i'oposes to try it in different 

 localities. I think that is a good thing. In certain soils plants vary 

 toward a betterment, and in other soils they go in the other direction. I 

 can see that the evidences of wide variation are not great, yet it is tiue 

 that a sweet apple has been found on a sour-apple tree. I believe those 

 things have occurred, that they have been propagated. Prof. Bailey says 

 they have, and Darwin says they have, in certain trees and limbs. As 

 an evidence that these things do occur, florists are very careful when they 

 find a limb that is peculiauly marked. I would like to have Prof. Taft 

 explain wiiat variations he has had. I have had no experience in the 

 greenhouse business. I never propagated a rose in my life. I took that 

 from the statement of others and what I find from reading. Prof. Bailey 

 refers to that. 



Prof. Taft: I have had no great experience in the matter of these 

 sports from bud variation, but I have seen a few cases, and if any florists 

 are here I am sure they have noticed the bud variations that often occur 

 in the chrysanthemums they have. It has not been uncommon for a 

 white variety to form on one branch of a yellow sort, and they are always 

 careful to take off all but one of those, and then they have '' IG to 1."" In 

 the case of the rose there are a number of instances where, by means of 

 bud variation, they have obtained new varieties. For instance, take two 

 of the most commonly grown of the new sorts, a dark pink kind and a 

 white variety. They both came as bud variations from a light i)ink 

 kind. The old Catherine Mermet is a light pink variety, and from that 

 a sport that is a bud variation gave a white rose; and now we have 

 Bridesmaid, a dark pink, which is also a sport. So you can see it is not un- 

 common, and in the case of many other fruits, many plants, we have these 

 variations in the color and in the nature of the fruit. 



Prof. Tracy: In breeding tomatoes we pay great attention to setting 

 each individual plant. We have observed for several years that the rou.gh 

 fruit on a tomato vine was nearly all on one branch ; that is. if we had five 

 rough tomatoes and forty smooth ones as the product of a vine, we would 

 find four of those five tomatoes were the product of one branch. This led 

 us to the question of w^hether, by saving the seed from that branch which 

 had rough fruit we would increase the tendency to rougii fruit in tlu^ 

 product. So this year we saved seed from three different ])lants. one of the 

 branches of each of which produced rough fruit, and the remaining two or 

 three or four branches produced smooth fruit.. We saved several of the 

 seeds from the rough branch and smooth branches, and i)lanted them. 

 We had about twenty-five plants in our trial in each case. The result in 

 the three varieties in which that test was carried on was that we thought 

 we saw some difference in favor of the product of the snu)otli fruits, of 

 the seed from the smooth fruits of the T)lants in each case. We were 

 not sure of it. We did it by counting, l)y ascertaining the number of 



