CORNELL UNIVERSITY EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 325 



lot Al was probably the most hopelessly mixed of any in the entire list. 

 The fruits ranged from pure white to green with white stripes, purple 

 striped, light solid purple, and very dark purple; and the mature fruits 

 varied from the size of an egg to that of Black Pekin. About equal num- 

 bers of the 175 plants were green and purple. A5 was nearly as badly 

 mixed, and some plants appeared which had the peculiar spreading habit 

 of early dwarf purple, a variety which had never entered into any of the 



A mongrel egg-frnit. (.1891.) 



crosses. A6 showed wide variations also. A8, which was simply a selec- 

 tion and had not been artificially pollinated, was about as variable as the 

 rest. 



Some of the fruits of these crosses were exceedingly handsome, espe- 

 cially one which appeared in Al and another in A2. The engraving on last 

 page shows one of them, but no black and white print can do justice to it. 

 White and purple bands were laid on the fruit in alternate waves which 

 seemed to run off the fleshy calyx lobes and to flow down the fruit. Efforts 

 have been made to perpetuate these remarkable types, but they are now 

 lost. Every new attempt at crossing reminds me that the chief value of 

 the operation is the infusing of new vigor into offspring rather than the 

 origination of new types. 



As a whole, 543 of the 1,405 plants produced perfectly green foliage, show- 

 ing the effect of the Round White. Most of the fruits produced by these 

 eight samples were of an indifferent and ill-defined color, and were utterly 

 worthless for market. In productiveness, the purple herbage plants were 

 ahead of the green ones, although the green parent — Round White — is more 

 productive than the Black Pekin. Of the 729 plants which gave sizable 

 fruits before frost, 454 were purple and 275 green. In habit, the A crosses 

 were also very various. The Round White seemed to exert a great influence 

 upon the stature of the plants, but the purple color of Black Pekin 

 appeared to be more potent than the green of the other. 



Series B came from a cross of giant Round Purple and White Chinese. 

 The former has purple herbage and a very large purple fruit, while the 

 latter has green herbage and a long club-shape white fruit. So far as 

 beauty ol form and color is concerned, this series was by far the most 



