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to the individuality of the trees? We shall know more 

 about it later, because we have considered this land fit for 

 Spy and have planted a small block not far from these three 

 trees. The individuals planted, however, have been budded 

 from a tree which has the faculty of turning off highly coi 

 ored fruit. 



For two years previous to going to California, Dr. 

 Shamel was investigating these problems in regard to our 

 Eastern Fruit and in the J. H. Hale peach orchard at South 

 Glastonboury, Conn., during these two seasons he found that 

 in four peach varieties which had the alternate habit of pro- 

 duction, not only did he find fruitful peach trees bearing 

 large fine crops in the off-season, but also that these same 

 trees would bear a crop in the general bearing season. In 

 other words, regular fruit-bearing habits were a character- 

 istic of these individual trees. Would the same be trans- 

 mitted to their progeny ? That is the next important ques- 

 tion. To what extent will they be transmitted? Is there 

 anything which will interefere with their transmission or- 

 are there any factors which it is necessary to control? None 

 of these things to my knowledge have been solved. They 

 are all awaiting solution at the present time. 



Can an individual go into an orchard and pick out the 

 best trees? Can a dairyman go into his bam and pick out 

 bis best cows without some assistance from the scale and 

 the Babcock test ? We have had the latter so well demon- 

 strated that we can generally answer the question with an 

 emphatic No ! The former has not been worked upon and 

 naturally we raise the question as to whether we might not 

 be able to go in and pick out the best trees apart from sta- 

 tistical measurement. We look at a tree and it meets our- 

 fancy and we say there is a good tree; it looks well; it is 

 thrifty and healthy. We do not know whether it is thrifty 

 or healthy because it is not working or whether it is so in 

 spite of a large amount of hard work. Mr. R. S. Vaile of 

 Santa Paula, California and another man decided that they 

 would pick out the hundred best trees out of a grove of 



