IMPROVEMENT OF PLANTS. 207 



lar, fruits. These are: I, flavor; 2, size; 3, tree form. Every 

 other thought should be banished from the mind of the experimenter 

 who must keep his eye fixed like a flint on these three points, color 

 markings, beauty, vigor of growth, earliness or lateness of season. 

 Everything else should be disregarded so that attention may be di- 

 rected solely to the matter in hand. In making a start much care 

 -will be necessary to select some of the largest and some of the best 

 flavored cherries, planting the pits promiscuously at a distance 

 from any other plants of the kind. When they come up, keep all 

 pruned in tree form to prevent crowding and to note what ones be- 

 have the best under such treatment. The next spring at blooming 

 time cross a number of the best flavored with the largest ones and 

 with each other. Plant the cherries resulting from this cross, side 

 by side in rows, the finest fruits in one row and those of the largest 

 size in a parallel row, four feet distant. When these seedlings bear, 

 select those that come nearest the ideal ones and grub out the rest. 

 Keep on raising seedlings and hybridizing in this way, always cross- 

 ing the best flavored with the largest of the second best, and soon 

 include some of the plants that take most kindly to training to tree 

 form. In crossing I would occasionally try to make use of plums 

 3r larger cherries, even though they be too tender to succeed unless 

 so crossed. The trouble would be in finding a domesticated cherry 

 which would take kindly to so violent a cross. Plums, however, 

 can be made use of, this fact having been proved in the case of the 

 Compass Cherry. If this fruit can be crossed back again with the 

 sand cherry, the question of size will be pretty nearly solved, for, out 

 of thousands of seedlings some would be as large as the Compass, 

 and others as well tasting, though not so plum-like. 



With repeated cherry crossings, using the choke cherry occa- 

 sionally to give the tree form, the plum would eventually be well- 

 nigh if not entirely eliminated. Meanwhile the pure cherry crosses 

 must be continued and as fast as any gain is made along this line 

 an outcross might be made, the hardiest of the large varieties — if any 

 can be found that will take kindly to hybridization — always being 

 selected. If nothing but the Compass and similar hybrids be found 

 which can be utilized, then make more use of the choke cherry, and 

 there will be no danger of reducing the iron-clad qualities of the 

 original stock. 



Remembering that there is no change in either the vegetable 

 or animal kingdom so great that wisdom, skill, patience and perser- 

 verance cannot bring it about in process of time, let us enter the 

 grand field that lies open before us with a fixed, determined purpose 



