250 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. [xil. 



tive trees. It is also asserted that cions from young 

 unbearing trees, particularly from nursery stock, give 

 later bearing trees than those taken from old bearing 

 trees, and there is much reason for believing this to 

 be often true. At all events, we cannot emphasize too 

 strongly the importance of careful selection of buds 

 and cions for the propagation of nursery stock. 

 Florists know that the selection of a parent plant is 

 a very important consideration in selecting cuttings 

 for the making of floriferous stock, and they are 

 even particular about the part of the plant from 

 which these cuttings shall be taken. Experienced 

 grafters always prefer to take cions from habitually 

 prolific trees, and they even exercise a choice between 

 the branches of the same tree, always avoiding water 

 sprouts and preferring the hard, well -ripened wood 

 from the upper part of the tree. All scientific consid- 

 erations commend these practices, for we are bound 

 to look upon every branch as in some sense a distinct 

 individual, since it is unlike every other branch, and 

 it is capable of living or of being propagated when 

 severed from the colony or the tree to which it be- 

 longs. I will not say that the barrenness of our 

 orchards is ever due to an unwise selection of cions 

 or buds by which they were propagated, but I am so 

 well satisfied in my own mind that such may be true 

 that, in an apple orchard which I am now planting, 

 I am expecting to top -work all the trees from trees 

 which I know to have been productive. It would 

 certainly be a good and safe stroke of business for a 

 nurseryman to select his cions, so far as possible, from 

 trees of known excellence and prolificacy, and to let 

 the fact be known. 



