SEEDLING APPLES. 33 I 



SEEDLING APPLES. 



WYMAN ELLIOT, MINNEAPOLIS. 



(S. M. Horticultural Society.) 



Truly this is an epoch of remarkable intensity ! What was a 

 profound mystery ten years ago today has become a pronounced 

 fact, so great is the advancement in learning. We are living in a 

 wonderful age of development. Xew methods and new laws, gov- 

 erning many of the unsolved problems of every day investigation, are 

 promulgated. Xew principles are discovered and spread, with light- 

 ning speed, from one end of the earth to the other. The student 

 of today has many helps that a few years ago were denied him 

 because of the inefficiency of reliable information, and there are yet 

 many problems in the industrial arts to be solved by the fertile brains 

 of students persistent in the pursuit of knowledge. 



What I shall say to you today is made up largely of extracts from 

 noted scientist upon the problems of heredity and cross-breeding, 

 applied more particularly to apple growing, and a few personal ideas, 

 suggestions and observations. 



Prof. W. Bateson in his book entitled "A Defence of Alendel's 

 Principles of Heredit}," says. "An exact determination of the laws 

 of heredity will probably work more change in man's outlook on the 

 world and in his power over nature than any other advance in natural 

 knowledge that can clearly be foreseen." "None have better op- 

 portunities of pursuing such work than horticulturists and stock 

 breeders, who are daily witnesses of the phenomena of heredity. 

 Their success also depends largely on a knowledge of its laws, and 

 obviously every increase in that knowledge is of direct and special 

 importance to them." 



"IMendel's laws of governing the problerns of heredity have 

 created a wonderful impulse in the study of hybridization of plants 

 and animals. While it may not hold w^holly true in all cases, and 

 whether some of the cases that depart most widely from it can be 

 brought within the terms of the same principle or not, can only 

 be decided by further experiments." 



"The question arises, how can these results be brought in har- 

 mony with the facts of hybridization hitherto known, and if all this 

 is true how is it that others who have carefully studied the phe- 

 nomena of hybridization have not long ago perceived this law?" 



"Mendel admits, from the first, that there are undoubtedly cases 

 of hybrids and cross breeds which maintain themselves pure and 

 do not break up (the Fameuse apple, for instance, resembles, in a 

 measure this type.) Such examples are plainly outside the scope 

 of this law." 



"He next points out what to any one who has rightly compre- 

 hended the nature of discontinuity in variation is well known, that 

 the variation in each character must be separately regarded." 



"In most experiments in crossing, forms are taken which diflfer 



