RASPBERRY BREEDING NOTES 



Paul Thayer 

 Pcnnsylz'aiiia State Agricultural College, College Station, Pa. 



THERE is growing wild in the 

 vicinity of the Ohio Agricultural 

 Experiment Station at Wooster 

 a yellow-fruited form of the common 

 blackcap, Rubus occidentalis. Having 

 in the variety trial-plots of the Station 

 plants of the Golden Queen, which is 

 virtually a yellow-fruited Cuthbert, 

 the writer was curious to see what 

 would be the result of crossing these 

 two yellow-fruited representatives of 

 normally dark-fruited species. Recip- 

 rocal crosses were made. The Golden 

 Queen pollen worked well on the 

 Yellow Cap, but the Yellow Cap 

 pollen on the Golden Queen gave few 

 fruits and the resulting seedlings were 

 such as to cast a doubt upon the 

 work. Of the two dozen Yellow Cap 

 X Golden Queen seedlings every one 

 was yellow fruited and all, with one 

 possible exception, showed the extreme 

 vigor and peculiar habit of growth of 

 the hybrid "purple-cap" or Rubus 

 neglectus. The fruit was larger than 

 that of the parent Yellow Cap, as 

 well as more juicy, and with the typical 

 neglectus flavor. In color it was the 

 faint pinkish yellow of the Golden 

 Queen. This suggests that the yellow 

 color mav not be a true color but rather 



an absence of color or a sort of albin- 

 ism. It also suggests the possibility of 

 breeding out the unattractive "pur- 

 ple" color of the purple-caps and secur- 

 ing red-fruited or black-fruited neglec- 

 tus varieties by using a yellow-fruited 

 form for one parent in hybridizing, and 

 thus permitting the other to impress 

 its color on the offspring. 



Another line of work followed was 

 the crossing of Cuthbert and Ranere 

 (St. Regis) in the hope of securing a 

 seedling with the autumn-bearing habit 

 of the Ranere and the other characters 

 of the Cuthbert. The outstanding re- 

 sult of this work was the high per cent 

 of seedlings with sterile blossoms. In 

 the Ranere X Cuthbert seedlings one 

 in seven was sterile. While in the 

 Cuthbert X Ranere seedlings eleven 

 out of twenty-four bore sterile blooms. 

 Such a high degree of sterility is 

 strange in view of the close relation- 

 ship of the two, both being Rubus 

 strigosus, with the possible admixture 

 of some idacus blood in the Cuthbert. 

 Especially is it to be wondered at when 

 one thinks how readily both strigosus 

 and idaeus unite with each other as 

 well as with occidentalis. 



The Human Machine 



Man, The Animal, by W. M. Small- 

 wood, Professor of Comparative 

 Anatomy, Syracuse University. Pp. 

 223-l-xiv ; $2.50. The Macmillan 

 Company, New York, 1922. 



From earliest childhood we are all 

 vitally interested in the working of the 

 machine that is our body. The answer 

 to the c|uestion, "What makes it go?" 

 is so complicated that many of us fail 



ever to understand our own intricacies. 

 Dr. Smallwood's book gives us much 

 valuable and useful information about 

 ourselves in a form that can be easily 

 understood. Starting with the law of 

 biogenesis, he traces the unity of life 

 from amoeba to man and shows how 

 the same fundamental laws apply to all 

 living things. Thirty-two photographic 

 illustrations and manv line drawings 



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