BREEDING 211 



perhaps, also, because of more care in propagation, have 

 shown decided superiority ; they may be more productive, 

 or the fruit larger or firmer than the type of that variety. 

 When these plants or their progeny are taken out of this 

 favorable environment, however, and grown elsewhere 

 side by side with other plants of this variety, little or no 

 difference can be observed between the two. This shows 

 that there has been no mutation, or marked and transmis- 

 sible variation from type, which is necessary before the 

 propagator is justified in designating it as a new variety. 

 Differences between individual plants of the same variety 

 are due almost entirely to differences in their environ- 

 ment. F. W. Card says : " The environment, though 

 apparently the same, may, in fact, differ greatly even in 

 the same row. Perhaps, in distributing fertilizer, a larger 

 amount may have fallen near one plant. Soil moisture is 

 variable. Perhaps one plant may have suffered from an 

 insect attack or from some mechanical accident which no 

 longer shows. Even under the best conditions of field 

 culture such possibilities always exist." Doubtless, the 

 propagator was sincere in believing that he had produced 

 a new variety by selection, but the fact is he simply had 

 some excellent plants of the old sort, and he should have 

 advertised them as such. 



Reported instances of hud variation. — Two supposed bud 

 variations of the strawberry have been noted. The Pan- 

 American, which is the progenitor of North American ever- 

 bearing sorts, is said to have originated as a sport. The 

 originator, Samuel Cooper, of Delevan, New York, says : 

 "The Pan-American was found by me in the fall of 1898 

 growing in a row of Bismarck plants set the previous spring. 

 The Pan-American is evidently a sport, by bud variation, 

 of the Bismarck." This conjecture may be true, but it 



