“PLANT BREEDING IN U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.” 303 
a hard, striped, roundish fruit, not unlike the watermelon, but inedible 
until cooked, when it is used for sweet pickles and preserves—was quite 
resistant to the disease. He used this plant for one of the parents and 
good varieties of watermelons much subject to the disease for the other, 
making a number of crosses. The seeds from these crosses when planted 
gave rise to about a thousand varieties of melons. There were all sorts 
of fruits—long and short, round and crooked, smooth and rough, plain, 
deep and pale green, and variously mottled and striped. Of the thousand 
or more varieties which resulted from these crosses, quite a good many 
proved resistant to the soil fungus, but only about six varieties had other 
qualities such as to make them worthy of further consideration. The 
seeds from these six plants were saved and planted the following year on 
land much subject to the disease in order to test on a large scale the 
qualities of the melons, and to learn more respecting their resistance to 
the disease. All continued to be resistant, but only one of the six proved 
to be a commercially satisfactory melon. The following year, therefore, 
only this one variety was propagated, but on a large scale and with 
excellent results. The plant is quite resistant to the disease, and produces 
a good melon—a melon which appears to be in every way equal to the 
best of the sensitive varieties which are firm enough to stand shipment. 
Acres of these melons haye been grown on land so thoroughly infected 
that ordinary melons could not be fruited. 
The Grape Vine——Something like twenty years ago there suddenly 
appeared in California a very destructive disease of grape vines known as 
the Anaheim disease. Anaheim was at that time a prosperous village in 
the centre of a very productive grape region. All the land practically 
was cultivated in grapes. In the course of four or five years this disease 
prevailed so extensively that the vineyards were destroyed, the wine- 
presses were sold, and the land was thenceforth devoted to other crops. 
Many efforts were made by Mr. Newton B. Pierce to determine the cause 
of this disease, but without avail. He found, however, that certain un- 
satisfactory varieties of grapes were little subject to the disease, and, by 
making thousands of crosses between these and the best varieties, that is, 
those much subject to the Anaheim disease, he obtained a number of very 
resistant vines. bearing superb bunches of fruit of excellent quality. 
Mr. Pierce’s first crosses were made according to my recollection in 1892. 
Mr. Pierce also successfully crossed raisin grapes to resist coulure, a disease 
which renders the bunches ragged and worthless for market by causing 
the abortion of the whole or a large part of the berries when they are 
very small. 
Resistance to Cold—The Department was forced to consider the 
breeding of plants resistant to cold by an accident to citrus-growing in 
Florida. In the winter of 1894-95 there occurred a very severe freeze 
in Florida which defoliated most of the orange and other citrous trees. 
The trees immediately put out a crop of new leaves, which, while still 
young and tender, were destroyed by a second freeze occurring about six 
weeks after the first one. This second injury so weakened the trees that 
a very large number of them died (90 per cent. perhaps), and what had 
been a very prosperous citrus region, vying with California in the pro- 
duction of oranges, ceased to be one altogether, the land being subsequently 
