III.] ASEXUAL VARIATIOX IX APPLES. 99 



a like origin. It is also known that there are a number 

 of species in which seeds are practically unknown, and 

 yet which run into many varieties, as the pineapple, 

 banana and bread-fruit; and note, if you will, the great 

 variations in weeping willows, a tree which never fruits 

 in this country. In our gardens there are three or four 

 varieties of the common seedless "top" onion, and I 

 have lieen able, by treatment, to vary the root of the 

 horse-radish, a plant which rarely, if ever, produces 

 viable seeds in this climate; and there are variable seed- 

 less plants in our greenhouses. I might also cite the 

 fact that very many fungi are sexless, so far as we know, 

 and yet they have varied into innumerable species. You 

 will be interested in a concrete case of the apple. The 

 Newtown Pippin, which originated upon Long Island, 

 New York, has been widely disseminated by graftage. 

 In Virginia it has varied into a form known as the Albe- 

 marle Pippin, and a New York apple exporter tells me 

 that it is a poorer shipper than the northern Newtown 

 and is not so long -keeping. In the extreme northwest- 

 ern states the Newtown, w^hile it has not been rechris- 

 teued there, is markedly unlike the eastern fruit, being 

 much longer and bearing distinct ridges about the apex. 

 Finally, in New South Wales, the ridges are more 

 marked and other characters appear, and the variety is 

 there known as the Five -crowned Pippin. This is not 

 an isolated case. Most northeastern varieties of apples 

 tend to take on this elongated form in the Pacific North- 

 west, to become heavy - grained and coarse -striped in the 

 Mississippi Valley and the Plains, and to take other 

 characteristic forms in the higher lands of the South 

 Atlantic states. This asexual variation is sometimes 

 very rapid. An illustration came directly under my own 



