324 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



adapted to desert conditions equally with other plants that grow in 

 the most humid climate ; so that I cannot quite agree with him that 

 it is lack of moisture. Rather, I think, hardiness is better defined 

 by saying that a plant is hardy when it has a constitution that adapts 

 it to the climate and soil conditions where it is growing. Numerous 

 plants grow amid desert sands and torrid heat, others of the same or 

 nearly allied species are at home far north in semi-arid regions, 

 and other plants must be supplied with abundant moisture, or they 

 cannot live. 



So then, it is the business of the horticulturist to breed plants 

 and trees that have a constitution that adapts them to the climate in 

 which they are to grow, and the average plant breeder had better 

 confine himself pretty closely to the well-known laws of heredity^ 

 by the selection and combination of characteristics of plants that have 

 the greatest hardiness, or adaptation to both summer and winter 

 conditions. 



Our parent trees must have vigor, a normal period of shedding 

 their leaves, neither too early nor too late ; the most perfect foliage 

 that we can select ; perfection in beauty and quality of fruit, clinging 

 to the trees until its quality is well developed. Neither parent tree 

 must be overloaded — if so the vigor and quality of its germ cells 

 will be lowered, and we cannot advance. 



In the meantime, Mendel's law of dominant and recessive char- 

 acters will be studied at our scientific experiment stations, and per- 

 haps a sufficient number of exceptions to the general application of 

 his law will be explained or eliminated so that the average experi- 

 mentor can understand them. And by and by we shall become 

 acquainted with Prof. De Vries theory of "mutations" and "salta- 

 tions," or breaks in continuous action of the heredity forces of "pro- 

 toplast and cells, which are the true bearers of heredity characters," 

 so that we shall be able to determine how a Concord grape leaped 

 into being out of the line of its heredity ; and then we shall know, 

 also, how a Morgan horse came to be. And when we have learned 

 all of this, we shall be wiser plant and animal breeders than we are 

 at this writing. 



Mr. Geo. J. Kellogg (Wis.) : I would like to ask Mr. Patten 

 what he has discovered in the way of crossing apples, and I would 

 like to ask him, since he has had a good deal of experience, if he 

 has discovered anything more hardy than we have at present. 



Mr Patten : Not in the crosses I have made, and I should have 

 to study this subject over considerably before I could determine in 

 my own mind to say that. I should say that the cross, for instance, 

 of the Duchess of Oldenburg with a Fall Pippin would certainly 

 indicate to me a very great advance in the fruit, the tree being 



