66 ANNUAL REPORT. 
Results of Cultivation and Selection. 
This method will apply more es pecially to the improvement of our native 
wild fruits by inducing them to variations that may be developed into varie- 
ties. This process has given us the Concord grape in only two removes 
from a variety of the wild ‘‘ Vitus labrurea.” Mr. E. W. Bull, of Concord, 
Mass., the originator, says he was led to make experiment from the difficulty 
he had in ripening at his place the varieties then in cultivation. He found 
a productive wild vine growing near his place that ripened its fruit early 
and was a very good eating grape for a wild one. He selected and planted 
‘some of the seeds and gave the plants good cultivation and care until they 
bore fruit, then selected seed from the most promising and planted again, 
and from this second batch came the Concord, which on account of its 
earliness, production, large size and fine appearance, has become the 
grape for the million, and is probably more extensively grown in the North- 
ern States than any other one variety; and it is said that the Concord has 
since become the parent of a number of varieties of every shade of color 
from pale green to jet black, and that some of them are nearly equal to the 
best foreign grapes, ‘‘Vitus vinifern.” And Mr. Bull is confident that our 
native grapes will yet be improved by this method to equal the best Euro- 
pean for all purposes. Doubtless the same course pursued with our best 
Minnesota wildlings would lead to equally good results. Some of the best 
of them are certainly worthy of trial. 
Professor Van Mons, of Belgium, has applied this practice to the cultiva- 
tion of the pear very extensively and with good success. He began by 
sowing the seeds of a healthy seedling that approached as near the original 
as anything he could find without taking a wild one. In the fifth generation 
he obtained some excellent fruit and continued the experiments to the 
seventh generation. He says that he did not preserve every one of the 
multitude of plants which he raised from seed until they matured fruits, but 
only those that he deemed to possess points of character essential to the 
production of good fruit, and the others were destroyed; and so accurate 
had his observation become by long experience, that he could tell by form 
of the leaf, color of the branches, and shape of growth, whether the fruit 
would be good or not. He also observed that each succeeding generation 
diminished the time for coming into bearing. He raised more than 80,000 
seedlings and some two thousand of them had meritorious qualities. By 
this method the tomato has been advanced from about the size of a potato 
ball to its present state of perfection, and the strawberry quadrupled in size. 
Considerable time may be gained in the experiments on tree fruits by graft- 
ing from the most promising seedlings upon bearing trees to bring them 
sooner into fruiting, and I sometimes think that it serves to hasten varia- 
tions and fix the types. I believe that our native plums might be so im- 
proved in this manner as soon to excel all fruits of the prune family. 
Cross-Breeding and Hybridizing.—Natural Process. 
I have not much knowledge of botany and would much rather end this 
paper right here, fearing that I shall not be able to make the subject suffi- 
ciently plain to be understood. Fortunately most of the fruit trees with 
which we have to do bear perfect flowers, that is, those which are capable of 
