species in Cultivation. 181 



Bailey^ has recently given a very striking example 

 w^hich illustrates this point. Mr. Peter M. Gideon sowed 

 a vast number of apple seeds and from these he got a 

 single plant whose fruit he ultimately put on the market 

 as the Wealthy Apple, because he made his fortune by 

 it. This apple is now one of the most favorite and 

 widely known in Minnesota. 



Mr. Gideon tells the story of how he got this mag- 

 nificent fruit as follows. For nine years he sowed apple 

 seeds so as to raise about a thousand young trees every 

 year. But all this led to no result. Then he happened 

 to buy a small basket of apples of a foreign kind in 

 Maine : they provided him with about 50 seeds from one 

 of which his Wealthy Apple arose. Sowing on a large 

 scale had no result ; sowing on a small scale but from 

 a new form fulfilled his highest expectations. 



Our argument is supported by the following evidence. 

 If apples and pears are allowed to grow wild they are 

 well known to revert to the type of the crab-apple and the 

 wild pear in a few generations. But each sort retains 

 the features characteristic of it ; they do not all revert to 

 one and the same wild form. 



Whence does the host of wild sorts of apples and 

 pears arise? We do not know. There are some who 

 assert that they have arisen in cultivation and have then 

 run wild. But this would hardly account for the large 

 number of new sorts that have been obtained. 



It is the same with most cultivated plants as it is with 

 cereals and fruit trees : almost every species consists of 

 more or less numerous subspecies about whose origin we 

 know nothing at all. 



Flax, the red clover and the poppy are very good 



^ L. H. Bailey, Plant-breeding, New York, 1896. p. 108. 



