208 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



from ten years ago, we had around us a large number of pear 

 orchards, and when the weather was such that the bees could 

 not get out of their hives, we raised scarcely any pears, but 

 when the weather was fine, we always got a good crop. I 

 think that is one reason why our fruits failed this year. 



FRUIT BLOSSOMS. 



L. H. WILCOX, HASTINGS. 



In reporting upon fruit blossoms, allow me to depart from the usual 

 formula and call attention to the possibilities of beneflcient results clearly 

 within our reach. 



While thousands of experimental tyros, with no proper conception of the 

 Creator's plan of life are working by crude and unscientific methods to 

 attain useful improvements in our various fruits, how few are taking 

 advantage of the ascertained facts of botanical knowledge to develop 

 the desirable and eliminate the undesirable characteristics of fruit by 

 proper selection and treatment of the blossoms, the reproductive organs 

 of plant life! That like produces like is a generally recjgnized law of 

 nature, but this is usually varied in individual forms by the composite 

 character of their ancestry, and variations are most readily produced in 

 form, quality and all the distinguishing attributes of plant life in kin- 

 dred species by proper use of pollen from the blossoms. If close bred, the 

 variations will be within comparatively narrow limits, and by judicious 

 selection of parents good qualities may be fixed and retained in the'r 

 progeny. If cross-fertilized by other varieties possessing different habits 

 of growth and quality of fruit, we can always safely assume that the pro- 

 geny will closely follow the female plant in constitution and vigor, while 

 the influence of the male will predominate in form, size and character- 

 istics of fruit. 



If fruit blossoms are pollenized from kindred species of the same family 

 of plants, true hybrids may be produced of great constitutional vigor, but 

 the lines of variation with these are quite uncertain and have not been 

 well established, except in one or two sub-orders. God provides against 

 unlimited multiplication of species in a state of nature by rendering the 

 blossoms of most hybrids impotent, so we may encounter greater difficul- 

 ties with those in the second than the first generation. Fixity in reproduc- 

 tion may be secured by repeated crosses with the better established par- 

 ent varieties, when it can be done, and thus artificial species created of 

 possible utility to mankind. 



Nature provides by most beautiful adjusted and elaborate arrangements 

 for the cross-fertilization of flowers, and each species has its own peculiar 

 adaptation of blossoms for this purpose. Some float large quantities of 

 pollen grains upon the air, while others use the bees and insects to carry 

 their love to distant flowers; and what is still more essential in the at- 

 tainment of this object, most bi-sexual fruit blossoms discharge their 

 pollen either before or after the stigma of that particular blossom is in 

 a condition to receive it. Grey says there must be some essential advan- 

 tage in cross-fertilization, or cross-breeding, otherwise all these various 



