78 



HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



until the entire stock is the lineal descendant of that individual plant — guard- 

 ing against degeneracy by a never-ceasing search for other individual plants 

 of equal or greater potential excellence, to be in turn increased. 



O. F. Cook: I want to say that I speak of coffee as an illustration, not as an argu- 

 ment, and I tried to avoid, as you may say, the use of conflicting instances because of 

 the variety of interpretations that could be put upon them. But I want to claim Mr. 

 Tracy's as an instance of an application of my theories, and, furthermore, that they can 

 be tested by such facts, and that I can accept Mr. Tracy's facts as normal and as actual, 

 and I don't believe that the current theories can accept such facts without violation to 

 the assumptions that are made on them. 



The Chair: 1 am sure we all feel very grateful, indeed, to Mr. Tracy for his paper. 

 It has a special value because of the fact of his connection with seed interests in this 

 country, and his very great oonortunities for observation. Proc^ably there are few whose 

 experience is so extended as that of Mr. Tracy, and I am quite sure that when his paper 

 is published we will read it with very great interest, and possibly our scientific friends 

 may, from the account which he gives, be able to reach some conclusions that they might 

 not otherwise have formed. 



D. G. Fairchild: Mr. Tracy cites an example of a tomato in which five plants were 

 chosen, and the progeny from those five plants varied greatly. Were those piants self- 

 fertilized, or is it possible that the male parent may have influenced the progeny dif- 

 ferently? 



W. W. Tracy: The plants were in a single field side by side, and they may have 

 been cross-fertilized, but they were from the same blood line exactly. In this particular 

 case of tomato I know of five generations from the same plants. 



W. M. Hays: It has appeared to me that a plant like beet is entirely self-fertilized. 

 There is evidence in a general way, and I think some positive evidence, that wheat does 

 occasionally cross-pollinate, and it may be due to these occasional crosses that wheat 

 is invigorated, and that some one plant among the crosses produced in nature finally 

 dominates, increases more rapidly and becomes the major part of a new variety. 



W. Bateson: I heard Mr. Tracy's paper with the greatest possible interest. I have 

 been experimenting with the Cupid sweet pea, and I think the possibility attaches itself 

 at once that it is a pure form, which may possibly explain the reappearance of that form 

 subsequently and simultaneously in different localities. If, for example, the Cupid may 

 once appear in a seed grower's field where it could get crossed on to another sweet 

 pea, then such crossing does occasionally happen. In our country the crossing of sweet 

 peas is occasionally accomplished by the leaf-cutting bee. If the pollen of a Cupid sweet 

 pea were to get on the flowers of a tall growing sweet pea, then the seed might be scat- 

 tered all over the country by the seed grower, and it would not appear the second year. 

 Then the third year the seed might be distributed, and then the Cupid might appear. 

 Of course, the simultaneous appearance of the Cupid in the third year of its sowing is a 

 strong evidence that once a form has appeared its appearance in three years is explicable. 



