282 NEW JERSEY AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



Experiments with Squashes. 



Much of the land occupied by squashes was newly acquired, 

 called tlie '"Xorth Lot/' and this with tlie strips, where peas and 

 beans were gi'own as a first crop, the area in squashes was fully 

 two acres. On May 28th the bush squashes were planted in ma- 

 nured hills four feet apart, and the vine sorts eight feet each way. 



The work was in immediate diarge of Mr Shore, whose lamented 

 illness and death prevent more than an incompilete record of the 

 results. Following are some observations drawn from the notes 

 taken chiefly at the close of the season and upon the fruits- which 

 remjiined in place after the leaves had fallen. 



SHAPE IN CROSSED SQUASHES. 



The squashes are nothing if not variable in shape; orchard 

 fruits are constant in form in comparison with them and the same 

 is true of the other vegetable fruits, not excepting peppers, which 

 possibly take the second places. 



Attention for the present is confined to the species CucurbUa 

 pepo L., and to the portion of it that takes the general name& of 

 summer sqiuishes and pum2:)kins. In breeding together of these 

 two groups, results have been reached that are summarized below : 



The ''Early Bush" (8) upon the "Field Pumpkin" (46) gave 

 in the blend pear-shaped fruits more or less ribbed ; in other words, 

 a, fruit resulted that apprroached an average between the flat of the 

 ''Bush" and the long oval of the ''Pumpkin." 



In the case of three-fourth blood of the flat scallop of the "Bush" 

 the results show thirty-eight scalloped to five oval, and when the 

 reverse is true, namely, three-fourth "Pumpkin," the forty-eight 

 plants showed no true scallopi — thus of the eleven with a, shell 

 there were recorded three as flat and one intermediate. The fifty- 

 six plants of the reeipTocal of the last, the total blend of "Pump^ 

 kin" remaining the same, the results were practically identical ; 

 that is, the shape was generally oval. 



In the crosses of the "Mammoth White Scallop" (10) upon 

 ''Field Pumpkin" (-16) the fruits were quite uniformly a scallop 

 oval, thus striking an average between the two forms. 



