84 - The Journai of Heredity 
and trial. So far, in our experience, we 
have failed to find a user of individual 
tree records who is not fully satisfied 
as to the value of this work. 
If the amount and quality of fruit 
produced by each tree in the orchard 
during a period of several years is 
known, we are at once able to locate 
the ‘drone,’ “robber,” or off-type 
trees and limbs, so that these trees may 
be replaced with the best type, usually 
by top-working entire trees with care- 
fully selected buds, or the removal of 
the undesirable limb sports by pruning. 
In other words, the individual tree 
records furnish a reliable basis for the 
removal of the drone trees and limbs, 
and the development of uniform or- 
chards. The advantage of uniform 
orchards can well be appreciated by 
those who have to do with the picking, 
assorting and handling of crops of 
fruit, as well as from the standpoint of 
the improvement of the quality and 
quantity of the yield of orange groves 
as a whole. 
Another most important advantage 
of the collection of individual tree 
records is the location by this means of 
desirable trees as sources of budwood 
for propagation. No intelligent or un- 
prejudiced person studying our best 
orange groves in the light of several 
years’ individual tree records, will ever 
be satisfied with buds secured in the 
ordinary manner. As one prominent 
nurseryman recently expressed it: ‘“The 
day of the ordinary nursery tree is 
about over in California.’”’ We are 
very glad to say that many California 
and other nurserymen are adopting the 
use of individual tree records as a basis 
for the selection of parent trees for 
propagation. Several of the leading and 
most successful citrus growers in Cali- 
fornia have repeatedly told us that they 
would not take an ordinary nursery 
tree as a gift, under any possible 
circumstances. 
We have carefully worked out what 
we believe to be the most practicable 
method of keeping individual tree 
records. It includes the numbering of 
every tree in the. orchard, and the 
record of its yield by a man detailed for 
that purpose at the picking season. It 
is not necessary here to give the details 
of this method, but we wish to emphasize 
the fact that some such method is an 
absolute prerequisite of successful bud 
selection. 
BUD SELECTION 
Our interpretation of the term bud se- 
lection is the selection of buds from indi- 
vidual trees and limbs of known behay- 
ior and, of course, commercially speak- 
ing, from those trees and limbs produc- 
ing the most regular, largest, and best 
crops of fruit. We have failed to find, in 
our six years of contact with orange 
growers, one of experience who has any 
doubt as to the importance and value 
of bud selection. We may also add that 
we have also failed to find during this 
time a deciduous-fruit grower, or any ex- 
perienced propagator of vegetatively 
propagated plants, who has any doubts 
as to the value of intelligent bud selec- 
tion. The only criticism we have heard 
in this connection is that concerning 
propagators who claim to use care in 
bud selection, but who are known to use 
only the ordinary methods of securing 
budwood with little or no attention to or 
knowledge of the trees or limbs from 
which the buds are cut. 
We have actual knowledge and defi- 
nite information of the origin of some of 
our most valuable horticultural and 
other varieties from bud mutations, and 
the propagation of many uniform and 
more than ordinarily productive and 
profitable orchards of trees or plantings 
of vegetatively propagated plants, as a 
result of systematic bud selection by the 
propagators. We have been so insis- 
tently taught that the only improvement 
of fruits possible is the origination of new 
varieties by hybridization, that some of 
us have overlooked the more important 
and practical field of the conservation 
and improvement of our valuable estab- 
lished varieties by bud selection. The 
same condition existed not many years 
ago with respect to the improvement of 
corn, tobacco, cotton, and other farm 
crops by seed selection. It is not likely 
that any sane person today would take 
the stand that it is impossible to im- 
prove our established varieties of farm 
crops by seed selection. However, a 
ee 
