October 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE 



63 



of dark greeu colour, with very few black 

 spines and bears its fruits mostly in pairs 

 at eacli joint. It also has a nice delicate 

 flavour. 



Fisks White Spine is the ordinary Am- 

 erican White Spine type. It runs 6 to 8 

 inches long, is somewhat rough and does 

 not set fruit witliout pollenation. 



Princess is rather an odd-looking var- 

 iety. It has rather dumi)y fruit with 

 rounded ends, has numerous black spines 

 and bears its fruits in clusters of four or 

 five at a joint. 



These three varieties together have all 

 the qualities we need in a cucumber. There 

 is the free setting of the English variety 

 together Avitli its smoothness, colour and 

 flavour.' There is the smaller size and 

 white spines of the AVhite Spine variety 

 and the rounded ends of the Princess. 



Each of these varieties has also its un- 

 desirable characters such as the length 

 and bottle neck of the English variety, the 

 roughness and inability to set fruit with- 

 out pollenation _which characterize the 

 White Spine type and the dumpiness and 

 coarse black spines of Princess, together 

 with roughness and lack of free setting. 



Before proceeding further it should be 

 pointed out that there are a few varieties 

 of the White Spine type such as Davis Per- 

 fect, that do set fruits without pollena- 

 tion, but they are usually quite rough. 



With all these characters combined in the 

 final hybrid it meant a great deal of care- 

 ful selection work to eliminate the undesir- 

 able qualities and to preserve those that 

 were worth while. 



We have not been able to study the plants 

 extensively enough to decide anything as 

 to correlation of characters. However, we 

 find that black spine is dominant over 

 white and spinelessuess and that freer set- 

 ting appears to ^o with the diominant 

 black, but we found a free setting white 

 spine recessive and this breeds true. 



By careful selection of the most desir- 

 able type of plant and fruit for the last 

 five generations we seem to have arrived 

 at the point where we can say that we 

 have a distinct new variety which ap- 

 proximates pretty closely to' our ideal, and 

 which is coming constant from seed. 



Part of the crop that we are growing 

 this fall belongs to the 10th generation. 



Up to and including the 4th generation 

 was grown at the Ontario Agricultural 

 College. 



Up to the present we have not distri- 

 buted any quantity of seed as we have not 

 enougli for general distribution, although 

 we have sent out several small lots to grow- 

 ers for trial under commercial conditions. 

 To date we have not had full reports on 

 these but a few that we have heard from 

 report quite favorably-. 



We have in this new variety a cucum- 

 ber that runs 8 to 10 inches long and about 

 2 inches in diameter. It is mostly smooth 

 and straight without any neck and carries 

 its thickness well from end to end. It is 

 a good dark green. It sets fruit quite 

 freely, some plants producing 30 good 

 fruits without artificial pollenation and 

 about one-third of these are borne on the 

 upright stem. Its flavor and texture are 

 good, being rather tougher than the Eng- 

 lish parent but not as coarse as the White 

 Spine type. 



To prevent pollenation by bees the ven- 

 tilators were screened. 



The plants of the earlier generations did 

 not set their fruits freely. Out of 33 

 plants grown of the 5th generation only 7 

 set one or more fruits without pollenation 

 and most of them were black spines; how- 

 ever, as before mentioned, we found one 

 white spine which is the basis of our new 

 strain. 



We also carried on some of the black 

 spine, thinking we might possibly get a 

 desirable white from them, but nothing 

 worth while developed. 



It would seem that the yield per plant 

 has been increased by elimination of the 

 poor yielders. Each new generation has 

 been selected from the best yielding plants. 

 In other words we have been isolating 

 plants possessing the free setting char- 

 acter from the mass of characters of the 

 original hybrid, and along with this free 

 setting we have managed to get the other 

 desirable characters. Improved cultural 

 metliods and reduction in the number of 

 seed fruits saved on each plant have also 

 lielped to increase the yield. 



In sowing the seed we put one seed into 

 a two incli pot. By covering with glass 

 and shading, the seeds are up in three or 

 four days, and are ready to plant out in 



