PROPAGATING NEW VARIETIES OF TREE FRUITS. 193 



The seeming advantage that the stock men have with their high- 

 ly developed breeds may be more seeming than real. The horticul- 

 turist has at least this advantage, that when he has once secured a 

 Concord or a Worden grape, or a Wealthy apple, he can multiply 

 them by the millions and have them exactly alike, while the stock 

 breeder can only rarely exceed the high average of his herd, even 

 with the most thoughtful care, and at best his failures will be con- 

 siderable. 



And there is still another feature that most horticulturists have 

 overlooked in the production of new varieties ; namely, that such 

 plants and trees as the Concord and Worden grapes, the Ben Davis, 

 Wine Sap, Fameuse, Duchess, Wealthy and the Patten's Greening 

 apples and the Richmond cherry are the crowning results in horti- 

 cultural evolution. They are to horticulture, whether produced by 

 natural or artificial selection or development, what the Morgan horse 

 is to horse breeders, Stoke Pogis 3rd to the dairymen and Bates and 

 Cruickshank Short Horns to the producer of beef cattle. Such 

 plants and trees are even more than thoroughbreds. They are the 

 highest types of their race. They are the culmination of all the 

 cumulative forces toward a higher perfection in horticulture. They 

 are the prepotent individuals that establish breeds and families in 

 fruits. Their seedlings are often as pronouncedly stamped as are 

 the offspring of the Holstein or the Jersey cattle. And if horticul- 

 turists would pay attention to the scientific laws of development 

 and breed from such plants, we would hear less about the deteriorat- 

 ing forces of reversion to lower ancestral types, and our table would 

 not be burdened with a multitude of small and worthless fruits. 



Of course, if we plant the seeds of inferior seedlings and their 

 crosses, that fairly represent generations of worthless fruits behind 

 them, the law of reversion will be strikingly manifest. 



On the grounds of the writer are seedlings of known parent- 

 age already in bearing. Such as Duchess crossed with Grimes' 

 Golden, Patten's Greening and Grimes' Golden, Pink Anis and Jona- 

 than, Maiden Blush and a Duchess seedling — a cross of fall Pippin 

 and Duchess — and Briar's Sweet with Pound Sweet and Wolf River 

 also, and so on. Also four or five grand-seedlings of the Duchess 

 with parentage partly known. 



When we know that in such crosses as Duchess and Grimes' 

 Golden we have hardiness and excellence of fruit combined, why not 

 pollinize that tree with its own pollen, or pollen of the Patten's 

 Greening and Grimes' Golden cross, instead of taking chances of dis- 

 sipating and scattering the forces that we have already combined 

 with the uncertain pollen of any other variety. 



