290 ANNUAL REPORT 



time, we may truly say the results have been wonderful. Yet for 

 the want of a practical horticultural knowledge, careful systematic 

 labor, and above all the ability to translate the language in which 

 the great Book of Nature is written, among our experimentalists, 

 we have failed to spread before mankind the beneficent blessings 

 clearly within our reach. 



Within the stigma of the blossoms we have the ovule the crea- 

 tive place of future life, sensitive to surrounding influences and 

 easily changed in the form of the succeeding development by the 

 agency of man, and here is the true starting place from which must 

 proceed all substantive progress in the improvement of our fruits. 



Variations of form and structure are so easily affected by artifi- 

 cial means in most Phaenogamous plants and especially in the great 

 rose family to which our fruits belong; and desirable variations 

 may be so easily fixed by successive systematic breeding until races, 

 if not new species, are established of superior excellence and utili- 

 ty for the purposes desired that it opens a promising field of re- 

 search to those who wish to go down to pospterity as benefactors 

 of mankind. 



To the torus the ovaries and the pistils of the blossoms in both 

 the parent plants we should look for the most available basis for 

 improvement and in those small fruits like the strawberry which is 

 not a true fruit but the enlarged fleshy end of the flower stalk, or 

 the raspberry which is a compact cluster of a number of independ- 

 ent stone fruits, and the blackberry a combination of both forms, 

 the number, form and perfection of the pistils and a large-celled 

 thick meaty pericarp have a much greater influence in forming the 

 size and condition of the enlarged receptacle fruit than even the 

 pollen itself. 



The same general rule here suggested, holds good throughout 

 the whole family, with such specific variations as their various 

 forms of construction may demand. Our present fruits are the 

 result of an indiscriminate mixture of all varieties within the lim- 

 its nature has prescribed. So, to be assured of any substantial 

 success, we must first cross in a way to secure parent plants of cer- 

 tain fixed tendencies on which we can rely, and then by intelligent 

 study of these tendencies, correcting form and improving quality, 

 by similar strains of pedigree pollen,secure increasing size.vigor and 

 productiveness by judicious use of foreign blood, and by bringing 

 to our aid all our present knowledge of plant life, the laws of her- 

 edity, the rules of variation, and the ways of successfully fixing 

 varieties, as races and true species, as a basis for subsequent 

 breeding, we may assist nature in improving the utility of her 

 products. When parent plants are too closely allied, the vitality 

 of their progeny will be impaired; if too distant, no individual 

 formation will occur. The prepotency of foreign pollen is well 

 known. Bi-sexual flowers never fertilize themselves when other 

 pollen is available. The in-breeding of animals weakens vitality; 

 so self-pollenization destroys vigor. Hybrids are usually strong 

 and healthy at first, but without proper care in fixing their charac- 

 teristics, they degenerate, nd their progeny are worthless. 



