June 23, 1906 



HORTICULTURE 



793 



AN OUTING AT CINCINNATI. 



The outing committee of the Cin- 

 cinnati Florists' Society have selected 

 the Norwood Inn as the place for 

 their picnic. Thursday, July 19, is 

 the date. Most of the craft spent a 

 day at this resort last summer on 

 the invitation of Ruscani and George 

 & Allan. There is a fine ball park 

 in connection with the grounds, also 

 bowling alleys where the members 

 can do a little practice work prepara- 

 tory for Dayton. The committee is 

 making great preparations and a good 

 time is assured all who attend. Lib- 

 eral prizes will be offered for various 

 games and sports. 



CLUB AND SOCIETY NOTES. 



The fifth annual convention of the 

 National Nut Growers' Association is 

 called to meet at Scranton, Miss., 

 October 31, November 1, 2, 1906. 



The annual exhibition of the North 

 Shore Horticultural Society will be 

 held on the grounds of the Essex 

 County Club, June 27 and 28. The 

 principal feature will be a rose and 

 strawberry exhibit. 



Remember the N. Y. Florists' Club 

 outing at Witzel's Point View Grove, 

 Monday, July 2, 1906. Tickets can be 

 had of the committee, L. W. Wheeler, 

 chairman; J. H. Pepper, secretary, or 

 Joseph S. Fenrich, treasurer, 110 West 

 28th street, New York City. 



The Tri-City Florists' Club met with 

 William Knees in Moline, Iowa, on 

 June 7, and after the transaction of 

 business, an address by Frank Shurt- 

 leff of Moline on "The Vacuum System 

 of Heating," and discussion of the 

 picnic at the Watch Tower on June 

 28, the cornerstone of Mr. Knees' new 

 range of greenhouses was laid and an 

 appropriate speech was made by Presi- 

 dent John Temple. These houses will 

 have steel framework and embody all 

 the latest practicable devices. A feature 

 of the meeting was the exhibition of 

 40 varieties of peonies by H. G. Bryant 

 of Davenport, 



At the meeting of the German Gar- 

 deners' Club of New Orleans on June 

 6 addresses were made by Mr. Wichert 

 on aquatics and R. Eichling on lilies, 

 of which he showed two species, L. 

 aureum and L. lancifolium rubrum. 

 This society has now twenty-two mem- 

 bers, all German or German-speaking 

 gardeners. It meets on the first 

 Wednesday of every month, and after 

 routine business the custom is to dis- 

 cuss the culture of some special plant. 

 The present officers are: Louis Muller, 

 president: Henry Kraaek, vice-presi- 

 dent; John H. Rinck, treasurer: Mar- 

 tin Gaillot, secretary; Robert Rein- 

 ecke, Richard Eilers and F. Brocker, 

 directors. 



FIRE RECORD. 



A large barn belonging to D. Robin- 

 son & Sons, florists, of Everett, Mass., 

 was entirely destroyed by fire on June 

 13. The loss was heavy but was cov- 

 ered by insurance. 



A Are caused by spontaneous com- 

 bustion consumed the greenhouse of 

 Isaiah Gauley, 17 Spring street, 

 Brighton, Mass., on June 14. The loss 

 is placed at $2000. 



THEORIES AND FACTS IN PLANT 

 BREEDING. 



Editor HORTICULTURE:— I seem 

 to be sharply arraigned in the issue of 

 HORTICULTURE of May 26th, by 

 Anne Dorrance, for the statements 

 made in the article by me published 

 April 21st. That article she says con- 

 tains many statements which are very 

 loose and very inaccurate. Not only 

 this, but the article summarizes two 

 laws in a manner "both absurd and in- 

 correct." She admits that the Gal ton 

 law is somewhat as crudely stated by 

 me, so that disposes of the charge of 

 inaccuracy so far as the Galton law is 

 concerned. She also says, "In 1901 in 

 its journal, The Royal Horticultural 

 Society of England published a tralns- 

 lation of Mendel's own paper des- 

 cribing his experiments. This was 

 made by Prof. W. Bateson of Cam- 

 bridge University and is, so far as I 

 know, the first publication of this 

 paper in English. Nowhere in this or 

 in subsequent papers could any state- 

 ments be found which would lead to 

 such a change of breed in poultry as 

 Mr. White describes, nor could Mendel 

 find in this description any trace of 

 his theory. Mr. White in his version 

 of Mendel's law supposes the purity of 

 parents, hence the purity of germ cells. 

 Does it take a law deduced by hard 

 labor, botfl mental and physical, as 

 Mendel's law was, to predict that if 

 two pure individuals be bred together 

 their offspring will be pure? How 

 could it be otherwise? Such a state- 

 ment is adding insult to injury. 



"The conception of the purity of 

 parents is not only untenable but un- 

 thinkable, unless we throw away our 

 basal theory of evolution and accept 

 that of special creation." As to the 

 above question, "How could it be 

 otherwise?" I will ask, does she not 

 understand that I was dealing with 

 hybrids, and does she not know that 

 if two individuals of two pure species 

 are bred together that the offspring 

 will be a hybrid, a combination of the 

 two, a blend, and not pure? As to the 

 insult, I will say that according to 

 the code no insult is given where none 

 is intended, and as to the injury I hope 

 it is not seriods. What is usually un- 

 derstood as pure bloods, are such 

 plants and animals as reproduce them- 

 selves. 



She says that the conception of 

 purity of parents is not only unten- 

 able but unthinkable. Now Hugo de 

 Vries has created a new species that 

 is pure and the fact is not only tenable 

 and thinkable but is a reality. 



As my critic has quoted Bateson I 

 will quote from his paper read at the 

 International Plant Breeders' Confer- 

 ence held in New York in 1902. He 

 says, "If a pea with green cotyledons 

 be crossed with one having yellow 

 cotyledons a hybrid is produced. That 

 hybrid grows up and bears peas in 

 its turn. Those peas will be composed 

 each individual pea, of a union of two 

 germs, each germ being a carrier of 

 either one or the other of the pure 

 parental characters, therefore we may 

 have two green germs uniting, or two 

 yellow germs uniting, or a yellow 

 germ uniting with a green." 



In another case he speaks of using 

 pure parental forms, and no one felt 

 injured or insulted. Again I quote 

 from a paper read before the American 

 Breeders' Association, Feb. 1-3, 1905, 



with the Cupid sweet pea and I think 

 by Dr. H. J. Webber, in charge of plant 

 breeding laboratory, U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture, subject, Mendel's law, 

 "What would happen if the hybrids 

 were bred with its own pollen, or if 

 in the case of an animal it were with 

 another exactly similar hybrid?" 

 Suppose, for the purpose of illustra- 

 tion, a hybrid of a fuzzy-seeded with 

 a black-seeded cotton be fertilized with 

 its own pollen. Let us consider that 

 a given number of egg cells, 100 for 

 instance, incidentally fertilized with 

 100 pollen grains of the same hybrid. 

 There are two kinds of egg cells pro- 

 duced, some with the potentialities of 

 the fuzzy seed and some with the 

 potentialities of the black seed, and 

 the same is true of the pollen grains, 

 taking the egg cells and pollen grains 

 without selection, therefore, we would 

 expect to have of the egg cells, 50 with 

 fuzzy-seed potentialities and 50 with 

 black-seed potentialities. 



If these are now brought together, 

 letting the law of chance govern the 

 union the probability is that we would 

 have 25 fuzzy uniting with 25 fuzzy, 

 25 fuzzy uniting with 25 black, 25 black 

 uniting with 25 fuzzy and 25 black 

 uniting with 25 black. Using f. to 

 represent fuzzy-seed potentialities, b. 

 to represent black-seeded potentiali- 

 ties, we would have the following 

 formula which will explain the prob- 

 able unions graphically: 



25f.-f25f.=25ff. 



(These do not contain potentiali- 

 ties of b. and will produce true.) 

 25f.+25b.=25fb. 

 25b.-f25f.= = 25bf. 



(These are hybrids, so far as this 

 character pair is concerned exactly 

 the same as in the first generative 

 containing potentialities of both f and 

 b.) 



25b.-(-25b.=25bb. 



(These do not contain the potenti- 

 alities of f. and will reproduce true ) 



This ought to satisfy my critic that 

 poultry may be bred in accordance 

 with Mendel's law. She says "let 

 Mr. White examine a little into the 

 intricacies of these cells which he so 

 glibly plans to read." I made no plan 

 glibly or otherwise; I simply stated 

 the limit of our knowledge in that 

 direction. She winds up her onslaught 

 by calling my closing statement a 

 marvellous finale. Well it was a mar- 

 vel to King John how the devil the 

 apple came inside the dumpling. Now 

 I stated early in my article that there 

 are two classes of plant breeders, one 

 seeks purity and fixity of strains, the 

 other seeks to produce new and 

 improved forms by combining many 

 species and varieties which adds to 

 the complexity of characters of many 

 plants, such as grapes, apples, pears, 

 etc. These plants never reproduce 

 themselves, and cannot in any sense 

 be considered pure except as species 



Of course where there is such a 

 complexity of characters Mendel's law 

 is of less value, but it is not the fault 

 of the law. This is why no two are 

 alike in many thousands of seedling 

 grape-vines, no marvel when viewed 

 with an honest purpose. Miss Dor- 

 rance seems to abhor the idea of pure 

 parentage. Well, there are still some 

 people who believe that the world is 

 fiat and that the sun revolves around 

 it. Her authority, Bateson, often uses 

 the term, pure organism, parentage. 



"He says I have been experimenting 



