THE APPLE 213 



to vary and to keep a great variety of ancestral 

 traits in evidence has been perpetuated. 



Finally, in modern times there has been per- 

 haps more attention given the apple by the horti- 

 culturist than to any other single orchard fruit. 

 The qualities of the apple and its adaptation to 

 all tastes, zones, and soils naturally account for 

 this. And the result is recorded in the present-day 

 lists of the cataloguer. Whenever, through the 

 chance blending of favorable ancestral strains an 

 exceptional individual has appeared, cions have 

 been cut from that individual and grafted on 

 other trees, and new cions cut from this and 

 again grafted, until the fruit of this indi- 

 vidual grows on so many different trees and 

 in so many different regions that its peculiar 

 qualities are thought of as representing an 

 established variety rather than an individual 

 personality. 



But if you will gather the seed from the apples 

 of a single tree of even the best market "variety" 

 in any given season, and will plant these seeds, 

 you may have, when the seedlings come to fruit- 

 ing, new "varieties" of apple, each differing from 

 all its fellows, in such profusion that you may, if 

 f you so desire, exhaust your ingenuity in finding 

 1 new names and publish a catalogue of your own 

 with a list of eight thousand or so "varieties" of 



