ORIGINATING NEW VARIETIES OF FRUIT. I75 



ORIGINATING NEW VARIETIES OF FRUIT. 



CHAS. G. PATTEN, CHARLES CITY, IOWA. 



(Read before the S. Minn. Hort. Society.) 



You have asked me to tell you how to originate "New Varieties 

 of Fruit." Of course you mean good fruits, varieties that in some 

 important essential are superior to the old. You have asked me a 

 hard question, one that is exceedingly difficult tO' answer. How to 

 produce the fruits that you want and that we need. How difficult 

 it is will be partly answered when you learn that it will be thirty-six 

 years the coming spring since I earnestly began to try, and now I 

 must confess to^ you that I cannot tell you ; or, at best, the efifort to 

 tell you will give only an approximate idea of how to do it, and, 

 doubtless, that is all you expect. 



The subject is a broad one. So much could be said upon it 

 that would not come within the scope of a paper like this, and yet 

 broad as it is we are restricted at every turn. Climatic influences, 

 restricted environments, as in the Russian apples and Siberian crabs, 

 or too much confusion of forces in the multiplied cross-polleniza- 

 tion of our American apples. In the first case there is too much un- 

 desirable heredity and consequent prepotency, and in the latter too 

 much mingling of the better and the weaker elements. 



In studying this subject we must ever bear in mind that "like 

 begets like," and that that likeness is dominant just in proportion to 

 the thoroughbred character of the plant or tree that we are seeking 

 to improve or change. Every breeder of high class animals recog- 

 nizes and acts upon this fact. And in connection with this fact, 

 there is another one which is scarcely less important — vigor, or 

 constitution of the individual. 



Every breeder of plants and animals knows that in a group of 

 either mixed or pedigreed stock there is one individual that for some 

 more likely than not unexplainable cause is superior in size, color, 

 vigor or constitution to all others in the group. Every nurseryman 

 observes this when passing through his two or three-year-old apple 

 grafts, that one tree will be much larger and finer than a score of 

 others on either side of it. Why? Because in this instance there 

 is a fitness or an affinity between the root and the graft that did 

 not happen to exist in the others. 



If you plant a hundred seeds of any of our cultivated apples you 

 will discover great variations in them. They have been naturally 

 crossed and re-crossed in the orchards with so many other varieties 

 which grew on other soils and in somewhat varying climates, that 

 variation in their offspring is very pronounced. Each individual 



