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HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



has led me to rather feel that this is a simple statement of the whole proposition that we 

 are up against in our breeding. We want to use those means that create variation, and 

 we want to use the best stocks we can get. We want to tip the land, as it were, and we 

 even tij) it at the lower end of the line far more than the other. We have hybrid varie- 

 ties, rrany of them, in which there are no very good plants, plants with a very poor yield, 

 but vie have occasionally a hybrid that has some plants that are exceedingly strong in the 

 combination of qualities we desire. 



D. Morris: Here is one point in regard to what Professor Cook has laid before us 

 this mornrng. He has cited coffee as an instance of a plant which has been for years 

 under cultivation, and that there is little sign of variation amongst the cofTee plants now 

 cultivated in diflferent parts of the world. As regards the New World, I should think 

 that is owing to the fact that probably all the plants of the New World that are under 

 cultivation now were originally obtained from one single plant which was brought to 

 Jamaica, and from there coffee plants were distributed to various parts of the New 

 Woild. Then there is another factor. When the coffee industry is being established, seed 

 is taken from healthy trees, and once the estate is established the trees last for anything 

 from thirty to forty or fifty years. So that the opportunity for variation from seed is 

 comparatively small. There are some trees now growing in certain parts of Jamaica that 

 are estimated to be anywhere from 60 to 80 or 100 years old; consequently, the coffee 

 plant is different from an annual, because there the planting and the opportunities for 

 variation are very considerable; whereas in the coffee plant, first of all started from one 

 individual plant brought into the New World, and also the fact that the opportu- 

 nities for variation are so small when once the trees are established, the situation is 

 different. And I will mention that there is no plant so variable as coffee when once 

 brought into contact with other forms. We have in cultivation in different parts of the 

 West Indies the common Arabian coffee; as a variety of that I know a plant generally 

 called Mocha coffee, with small berries; then a species was introduced from West Africa 

 called Liberian coffee; then lately we have had a small berry coffee from Sierra Leone. 

 Those being grown together in many gardens at the present moment, we cannot get .Tny 

 of those coffees perfectly pure from seed. The other day I saw a bed of coffee seed- 

 lings, and it was almost impossible to say what those seedlings were. I do not state 

 these facts as an argument against what has been advanced by Professor Cook, but I 

 think it is valuable to place on record the circumstances connected with the coffee plant 

 as it is now being cultivated in the West Indies. I know that in estates in Jamaica 

 there arc variations between the coffee plants; there are some with rather large leaves 

 and that yield good crops; there are others with small leaves that yield small crop.i, and 

 so on through many variations. Then we have other trees that, instead of the hori- 

 zontally spreading branches that the coffee tree usually has, have an erect habit, and 

 those are often called by the planters male trees. In fact, I have been in Ceylon for many 

 years, i have been in the West Indies for many years, and I have been very closely con- 

 nected with coffee cultivation, and 1 should say that if you were critically to examine the 

 coffee plants from different parts of the world I think you will find a good deal of varia- 

 tion amongst the individual plants at the present time. But, generally speaking. Professor 

 Cook is quite right, that, looking largely at the coffee as grown in Central America and 

 the West Indies, the coffee is fairly uniform in character. But still I don't know 

 whether that is a good illustration to support his arguments. We have the fact that 

 the coffee has probably been derived from a single plant; we have the other fact that 

 establishing plantations of coffee can only take place at very long intervals, and 

 coffee planting has been extended of late years only in Mexico and Central America. 

 So, if we look for variations in the coffee trade we must look in those countries where 

 is has been more lately introduced. 



W. Fawcett: I would like to say there have been some considerable additions to the 

 coffee area under cultivation in late years, the last ten years or so. 



D. G. Fairchild: I should like to have Professor Cook elaborate briefly a sentence 

 which reads as follows: "As organisms increase in complexity, they are less able to per- 

 sist in a simple series, but require the interweaving of different lines of descent." Has 

 this any bearing upon the fact that has been so clearly brought out by Mr. Burbank, that 

 his best results in breeding have been with sports of plants which were represented by a 

 large number of different so-called species? His plums, many of them, he told me, would 



