No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 699 



lias taken in the multiplication of varieties of fruits and flowers on 

 the face of the earth. I do not know of any one thing that so 

 forcibly illustrates the great wisdom and foresight of the Creator 

 than this. Let us take an apple blossom, for example, which can 

 be used as a type of all fruit bearing trees and vines. Here we 

 have: 



(1) In the centre a straight pin with soft head; 



(2) 25 slender pins with oblong organs attached to the end; 



(3) A drop of very sweet liquid at the base of the centre pin; 



(4) The Bee with an instinct to gather this sweet liquid; 



(5) The base of his legs and his belly provided with hairs; 



(6) The fact that the Bee does not mix his drinks; 



(7) The dual use of pollen; 



(8) It does not discriminate between varieties. 



It has been discovered recently that many trees, bearing ap- 

 parently perfect blossoms, are not self-fertile, while the blossoms 

 have the proper number of stamens, which furnish an abundance of 

 pollen, this pollen is actually inert when placed on its own pistil, 

 and in order to fertilize the embryonic seed the pollen must be 

 brought from a different variety. The Wild Goose plum is the 

 most pronounced example of this peculiarity. The fact that in some 

 places the Wild Goose plum bore abundant crops and in others was 

 absolutely barren, caused fruit men for a number of years to be- 

 lieve that there were two kinds of Wild Goose plums; but after 

 budding only from bearing trees, and setting out these young trees 

 in orchards, they found the same singularity, and gave up that 

 theory. Quite recently, within the past twenty years, one of the ex- 

 perimentors in the United States Department of Agriculture, at 

 Washington, hit upon the true cause, and now any one can have 

 Wild Goose plums in abundance by planting a few plums of an 

 other variety near them, and the bees will do the rest. Since the 

 discovery in regard to the Wild Goose plum, it has been found that 

 many varieties of pear and some of our best apples are partly self- 

 sterile, and while they are not absolutely barren when planted 

 alone, they yield much better when planted beside some other var- 

 iety that blooms at the same time. I think it is only within the 

 past ten years that the Bartlett pear has been placed in this list. 

 We have no complete list at this time, but the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture is experimenting along this line and adding to the list 

 < ;uh year. The fact is. it has grown so large that they recommend 

 that in planting orchards no large block of any one kind shall be 

 planted, but that we should plant not more than four or five rows of 

 one variety I hen a row of something else, and so on, to allow an 

 inter-change of pollen. While a great deal of this pollen is carried 

 by the wind, the most effective work is done by the bees. 



Strawberries cannot be forced in greenhouses without the aid of 

 bees, even by the use of perfect-flowering kinds. There is no wind 

 to shake off the pollen, and to have perfect berries it must be 

 thoroughly distributed or each of the numerous seed-; will not get 

 its grain, and we will have a mis-shaped berry. By placing a hive 

 of bees in the greenhouse just as fine berries can be grown as out 

 of doors; better, in fact, because we have perfect control of the 

 water supply. 



