HOW THE VARIETIES HAVE COME 453 



these types are yet and, in fact, never will be 

 brought to that condition when they may be said to 

 be good enough. This conclusion, while apparently 

 the only logical one, does not seem to have been 

 reached by writers on the improvement of our na- 

 tive fruits. The tendency of writers has always 

 been, unfortunately, to press the importance of un- 

 developed species, forgetting that the really impor- 

 tant things are the ones which we already have, and 

 all of which are far from perfect. The whole ques- 

 tion, then, is simply that of the best methods of im- 

 proving fruits, without respect to their nativities. 



Having now seen that new types of plants are 

 impressed into cultivation largely because they are 

 needed, and in an undesigned or almost fortuitous 

 way, let us ask how these particular domestic fruits 

 which are native to North America have been ame- 

 liorated. The process has been a most simple one: 

 attractive varieties, or forms, have been found and 

 men have transferred them to the garden. This, in 

 essence, has been the method of the amelioration of 

 most domestic plants. It is first a discovery of a good 

 form, and then the perpetuation of it. What has 

 been called plant -breeding is mostly discovery; or, in 

 other words, so far as the cultivator is concerned, it is 

 accident.* In one place, an attractive wild blackberry 



* These remarks concerning the accidental origin of varieties call out the 

 following significant comment from Frank T. Swett, Contra Costa couuty, 

 California : " While chance seedlings spring up in fence corners and similar 

 places in countries where there are summer rains, it is H rare occurrence in 

 arid regions. This was brought to my notice forcibly this spring. In May 

 and June our vineyard was filled with tens of thousands of little grape seed- 

 lings, an inch or two high. They never grew much higher, and by July they 

 had all perished. It is the same in our orchards. The five months of drought 

 are too much for any seedling fruit, unless it is irrigated. As similar condi- 

 tions of summer drought are prevalent over Arizona, New Mexico, and parti 

 of Texas, it is hardly probable that many chance seedling varieties will origi- 

 nate within those limits." 



