ON SPECIFIC NEEDS 
There is one additional hint that it might not 
be amiss to emphasize. In selecting seed for 
planting, it is desirable, of course, to select the 
largest and best specimens. But it should be re- 
called that the real test of quality in a tree is not 
the production of exceptional individual fruits, 
but the size of the average fruit that it bears. 
Exceptional conditions of nutrition may cause 
a single apple to grow very large on a limb that 
as a rule produces only fruit of meager propor- 
tions. Seedlings from this exceptional fruit do 
not inherit the exceptional quality of their parent. 
It is the germ plasm of the tree itself that 
counts. Seed from a very small apple of a good 
variety will produce better offspring than the seed 
of a very much larger individual specimen of a 
poor variety; so it is far better to select the poorest 
fruit of a good variety rather than the best of an 
ordinary variety. 
This principle should be borne in mind in un- 
dertaking plant development of any kind, not 
merely with reference to orchard fruits. It is the 
inherent properties of the plant organism as a 
whole that will determine the average character 
of the fruit. 
BREEDING FOR QUALITY 
As to the special qualities of fruit that call for 
improvement, details, of course, differ with dif- 
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