SEEDLING APPLES. 333 



The reasons seedlings of the Wealthy apple are so frequently 

 like it in quality and exterior appearance has been a mystery to me 

 for some time, and it only recently has been made plain why it 

 should be so in so many instances. Xearly every year, at our state 

 fair, seedlings have been put on exhibition resembling so much the 

 true type of the Wealthy they have been indistinguishable, many 

 very closely alike in color, shape, size, flesh, quality, «S:c. !Many 

 times we have declared they were only grown on Wealthy trees, 

 but I now begin to see we have been misguided in not judging them 

 more intelligently, erring honestly from our ignorance in not know- 

 ing the true theory of cross-fertilization as explained by the most 

 modern scientific experts on hybridization. 



The physiology- of reproduction and heredity is receiving, in these 

 modern days of enlightenment and research, a great impetus, and 

 when once a fixed law that can be relied upon, governing the methods 

 of cross breeding to form certain types, be discovered, the groping 

 our way in a vague, uncertain manner will be done away with. 



Gregor Mendel says "that so far no generally applicable law 

 governing the formation and development of hybrids has been suc- 

 cessfully formulated can hardly be wondered at by any one who is 

 acquainted with the extent of the task and can appreciate the diffi- 

 culties with which experiments of this class have to contend ;" he 

 further says "the value and utility of any experiment are determined 

 by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used." 



"The selection of parents for hybridization and experiments of 

 this kind must be made with all possible care if it is desired to avoid, 

 from the outset, every risk of questionable results." 



"Accidental impregnation by foreign pollen must be guarded 

 against ; if it occurred during the experiments and were not recog- 

 nized, it would lead to entirely erroneous conclusions. It is essential 

 to select those characters which are constant and easily and certain- 

 ly recognizable, and when their hybrids are mutually crossed they 

 yield perfectly fertile progeny." 



"If two plants which differ constantly in one or several charac- 

 teristics be crossed, numerous experiments have demonstrated that 

 the common characters are transmitted unchanged to the hybrids and 

 their progeny : but each pair of differentiating characters, on the other 

 hand, unite in the hybrid to form a new character, which in the 

 progeny of the hybrid is usually variable. In many cases the hybrid 

 character resembles that of one of the parental forms so closely that 

 the other either escapes obser%-ation completely or cannot be de- 

 tected with certainty. This circumstance is of great importance in 

 the delineation and classification of the forms under which the off- 

 spring of the hybrid appears. Henceforth those characters which 

 are transmitted entire, or almost unchanged, in the hybridization, and 

 therefore in themselves constitute the character of the hybrid, 

 are termed dominant and those which become latent in the process, 

 recessive. The expression recessive has been chosen because the 



