No. 4.] CROSSING OF PLANTS. 45 



and recognized. Still confident, in 1891 I planted the seeds 

 of my crosses, and as the summer days grew long and the 

 crickets chirped in the meadows, I watched the expanding 

 squash blossoms and wondered what they would bring forth. 

 But they brought only disappointment. My squash had 

 taken an unscientific leave of absence, and I do not know 

 its whereabouts. And when the frost came and killed every 

 ambitious blossom, my hope went out and has not yet returned. 

 Let us now recall how many undoubted hybrids there are, 

 named and known, among our fruits and vegetables. In 

 grapes there are the most. There are Rogers' hybrids, like 

 the Agawam, Lindley, Wilder, Salem and Barry ; and there is 

 some reason for supposing that the Delaware, Catawba and 

 other varieties are of hybrid origin. And many hybrids 

 have come to notice lately through the work of Munson and 

 others. Bu¥ it must be remembeied that grapes are nat- 

 urally exceedingly variable and the specific limits are not 

 well known, and that hybridization among them lacks much 

 of that definiteness which ordinarily attaches to the subject. 

 In pears there is the Kieffer class. In apples, peaches, 

 plums, cherries, gooseberries, blackberries and dewberries, 

 there are no commercial hybrids. The strawberry is doubtful. 

 Some of the raspberries, like the Caroline and Shaffer, appear 

 to be hybrids between the red and black species. Hybrids 

 have been produced between the raspberry and blackberry 

 by two or three persons, but they possess no promise of eco- 

 nomic results. Among all the list of garden vegetables 

 ( plants which are propagated by seeds ) I do not know of a 

 single authentic hybrid ; and the same is true of wheat, — 

 unless it be the Carman wheat (rye varieties become promi- 

 nent) , — oats, the grasses, and other farm crops. But among 

 ornamental plants there are many ; and it is a significant fact 

 that the most numerous, most marked and most successful 

 hybrids occur in the plants most carefully cultivated and 

 protected, — those, in other words, which are farthest 

 removed from all untoward circumstances and an independ- 

 ent position. This is nowhere so well illustrated as in the 

 case of cultivated orchids, in which hybridization has played 

 no end of freaks, and in which, also, every individual plant 

 is nursed and coddled. For such plants the struggle for 



