1883.1 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



275 



portion of the crop is produced and perfected — will 

 show a marked difference in size, appearance 

 and quality, from that of the same variety of plant 

 growing near and impregnated by another stami- 

 nate variety. | 



This sort of collateral inheritance of qualities, 

 has always seemed to some of us wise ones as not 

 only an impossibility, but the idea so much of an 

 absurdity, as scarcely to merit denial. But, I 

 think a little reflection upon one or two of the 

 primary and well-known laws governing the 

 matter of reproduction by seed, will convince any 

 unprejudiced mind, not only of the possibility of 

 such collateral effects of impregnation, but of their 

 extreme probability, not to say certainty. 



These laws are, first, that the fertilization of the 

 seed is a necessary condition to the formation of 

 the fruit, as when there is no impregnation of the 

 seed either from the pollen of the fruit-bearing 

 plant itself, or from a neighboring one, no fruit can 

 be developed. Secondly, that the seed, after im- 

 pregnation, excites and stimulates by the power of 

 the reproductive principle of life imparted to it by 

 that impregnation, the development and growth of 

 a matrix of fruit to suit its own requirements; to feed 

 upon and perfect its own growth and maturity 

 until it is in condition to return to the soil as the 

 embryo of a new plant. Now, in view of these in- 

 disputable facts, is the conclusion not irresisti- 

 ble that, taking for example a bed of a strongly 

 pistillate variety of strawberry— that portion of the 

 bed lying near to and consequently largely in- 

 fluenced by impregnation from a staminate variety 

 bearing large, fine, highly colored or high flavored 

 berries, will bear fruit, partaking to a marked de- 

 gree more of those qualities than another portion 

 of the same field, coming under a like influence 

 from staminate plants bearing a smaller and 

 meaner class of fruit ? This would seem a matter 

 of easy determination, and one well worthy of 

 careful experiment, not only by those engaged in 

 propagating for new and improved varieties from 

 seed, but by those as well who grow for market 

 purposes. 



HOW THE YOUNG PLANT STARTS 

 INTO LIFE. 



ARSTRACT OF LECTURE BY PROF. J. T. ROTHROCK, 

 FAIRMOUNT PARK. 



There are two kinds of young plants — those 

 which are produced from a seed containing an 

 embryo, and those which come from a spore which 

 has no embryo. Young plants start in life from 

 various positions, those on the soil being most 



common. Then others utilize living trees as a 

 starting point, either to lie there as air plants, like 

 so many of the gorgeous orchids of tropical regions, 

 or like the parasitic mistletoe of the temperate 

 region ; the former simply finds a resting place, 

 the latter sends its roots down into the tissues of 

 the supporting plant and lives upon the partly- 

 prepared juices of the host plant. 



In California there is a group much like the 

 Mistletoe: the Phoradendrons, which expel their 

 glutinous seeds with force enough to lodge them 

 on the neighboring pine branches, where, held by 

 their viscidity, they grow and send their sapsuck- 

 ing roots down through the bark into the cambium 

 layer of the pine. 



Among lower plants, those which come from 

 spores, were found many fungi which live on de- 

 caying or on healthy vegetable or animal matter. 

 Among the rarer of this kind were the Torrubias, 

 which grow out of and kill living insects or larva. 

 Some instances of this kind were very striking. 

 The foot disease of India is, now well known to be 

 due to attacks of a fungus much hke our common 

 bread mould. The spores of this fungus, which is 

 very common in India, find a resting place on the 

 skin of the human foot. They there grow deep into 

 the flesh until this and the bones become a diseased 

 mass, full of canals and round cavities. Even the 

 bone is filled with round holes where the fungus 

 flourishes until nothing but amputation above the 

 ankle can save the sufferer's life. 



Lichens grow on trees, earth and rocks. Some- 

 times the same species is cosmopolitan, in temper- 

 ate regions. Thus growing on the trees in West 

 Chester the lecturer found a little yellow lichen. 

 He found the same species growing two hundred 

 feet up in the air on the spire of the Strasburg 

 Cathedral in Germany; and later the same species 

 was sent to him, growing on the bleached lower- 

 jaw bone of a human being which was found on 

 the dreary shores of the Arctic Ocean. This the 

 lecturer exhibited. The manner in which, from a 

 single spore, many moss plants may be produced 

 was next explained and illustrated. 

 I How the ferns grew from spores into a prothal- 

 lus, and from this, by asexual generation, the fern 

 ' came, was also illustrated. The fern fed upon the 

 prothallus out of which it grew, in a manner that 

 called to mind the pelican, which was said to open 

 its breast to feed the young on its own blood. 

 The Lemna or Duckweed, a floating water plant, 

 hardly more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, 

 contained within the parent plant, at one time, 

 three generations of young plants, which, toward 



