STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 337 



did not claim to have found enough to prove it to be a law. In 

 illustration he showed me a lot of seedlings from the Turkish Cap 

 tomato, a rot proof variety. The tomatoes on all of these seed- 

 lings were like tho ;e of the mother plant iu respect to being free 

 from rot, although their size, shape, and quality was as various 

 as might be expected from unisolated pollen, mixed as it 

 would be liable to be by the winds and insects. It may be reasona- 

 bly expected that in this case, when both pistils and pollen 

 shall be perfectly isolated, and the pollen being taken from a 

 choice, hardy variety, among some of the seedlings will be found a 

 good tomato on a stock that will make it rot-proof, and whose 

 character may be fixed as a distinct variety. 



Gardeners as well as fruit growers and farmers have much to 

 hope for in the work of the agricultural experiment stations in 

 the discovery of facts bearing upon this law. 



In our efforts to originate hardier, better, and longer keeping 

 fruits by seedling production, we shall save much time and labor, 

 (heretofore wasted in hap-hazard work, where not one seedling 

 tree in ten thousand is ever an improvement) if we find out and 

 apply the laws of variation whereby improved conditions around 

 the parent plants, impart a tendency to improvement in their pro- 

 geny, and the law of cross-breeding whereby these tendencies are 

 developed, united and fixed. We shall find analagous facts for 

 guides in these things in close observation of all plant and animal 

 life. Races improve in reproduction solely through improved 

 conditions in the parent life, and through proper unions of strength 

 and quality. We cannot attend too carefully to these conditions in 

 the culture of all living things over which we have control; for 

 there is abundant evidence of the certainty that every mood of the 

 parent life is liable to transmission to succeeding generations for 

 better or for worse. 



Mr. Saunders, at Washington, told me of two interesting ex- 

 periments that he had made some years ago. Wishing to fix the 

 strong upright stem and other vigor of the Fillmore strawberry 

 upon some new plant having a better berry, he fertitized the Fill- 

 more pistils with pollen from one of the black varieties ; he had 

 forgotten the name of it, but probably it was the Black Defiance. 

 Among the new seedlings was a plant having the very character 

 he sought to produce; a plant of good foliage, the stem stout, hold- 

 ing its fruit clear from the ground, and the berry of excellent 

 quality. The name given to the new plant was Patuxet. It was 



lost in the mud of the overflow of the Potomac into the Agricul- 

 22 



