258 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



As a principle, plant breeding is plant education, or plant development, in 

 the order of evolution. 



While we can readily understand the plant's changes in form or substance, 

 through climatic influences, they are frequently so marked in their essential 

 character, that no one can understand these variations unless they are the 

 results of the plant's own volition. 



Upon general principles, it is safe to assert that plant breeding is simply 

 giving a plant an opportunity to develop its latent forces, in obedience to the 

 command to grow. A plant in its native habitat, is an undeveloped, uneducated 

 object in the realm of nature, and has its analogy in the wild man of the wood, 

 from which it differs only in degree. In its native state, the plant's only 

 mission is reproduction, its whole energy is along those lines. The develop- 

 ment of its functions, or active principle that gives it a place in the economy of 

 nature, whether it be for food, raiment, or medicine, or for its uses in the 

 mechanic arts, is left until such times as these productions become indispensable 

 to other creations. 



As a fitting illustration of this principle, we will take the banana, Musa 

 paradisica, the fruit of which is highly nutritious and is credited with sustain- 

 ing a larger number of the human race than any one of the cereals. Though 

 less nutritious than wheat or potatoes, yet the space occupied by their culture, 

 and the care required are so very much less that Humboldt has calculated the 

 produce of bananas compared with that of wheat as 133 to 1, and to that of 

 potatoes as 44 to 1. 



In its native habitat, the fruit is filled with small, black, shining seeds, 

 which, like all other seeds,- exhaust the plant's vital energies, far more than the 

 fruit we eat. 



Under cultivation, the banana rarely ever produces seeds, and reproduction 

 is effected by suckers, or more properly, off-sets, and the energy required to 

 produce seed is applied to the production of fruit, in remuneration for services 

 rendered in the reproduction of the plant. An individual plant of the banana 

 produces but one crop of fruit. As soon as this is gathered, the stem im- 

 mediately begins to decay, and is removed, and the numerous off-sets from 

 the base of the plant are separated and planted out in new fields, and, in a few 

 months will produce a crop of fruit, which keeps up a continuous harvest. 



The orange is another striking illustration of the plant's adaptation to 

 man's use. In the direct line of evolution, it ceased, but a few years ago, in 

 one of the districts of Brazil, where this fruit is found growing to the greatest 

 perfection, to produce seed, instead of which, the whole energy of the tree was 

 employed in producing fruit, nature, seemingly, confident that the perpetuation 

 of the species was safe in the hands of those who were to profit by the fruit 

 produced. The result was that a much larger crop was obtained from each 

 tree, and of superior quality, as well as increased size. 



The seedless orange, as now grown in California, is not only the largest, 

 but the most delicious fruit of its kind that comes to our market. No horticut 

 turist can claim the honor of originating the seedless orange, no one had the 

 least idea of such a possibility. 



The potato, where grown to the greatest perfection, rarely produces seed, 



