HYBRIDIZATION. 117 



I met a veteran pomologist in Boston who had recently been 

 to the West and to Europe, who is pretty confident that the 

 Concord is a hybrid, and who believes in hybridization as the 

 only method of improving the fruit, and that seedlings appar- 

 ently not hybridized have been accidentally hybridized by birds 

 or in some other way. He believes that the improved pears are 

 to be the result of such hybridization, either done on purpose or 

 by accident. Now, with regard to the pear and other large- 

 blossomed fj'uits, it is very possible, because large insects can 

 get into them, and, going from one to the other, may carry the 

 pollen of one, when it is ripe, to the stigma of the other, the 

 pollen of which is not ripe. Btt with the grape it is different. 

 Not only is the blossom so delicate and frail that it will not sup- 

 port an insect of any size, but the pollen is ripe, almost uni- 

 formly, before the calyx is thrown off; and in the act of throw- 

 ing off the calyx the pollen is distributed upon the stigma, and 

 it is instantly impregnated by that act. The warm sun in mid- 

 day gives the calyx a sudden impulse and it flies off; if you 

 have a magnifier in your hand you can see a delicate cloud of 

 dust in the air ; and if there is a grain of pollen deposited upon 

 the stigma it is instantly impregnated. Occasionally the elonga- 

 tion of the anthers will throw off the calyx before the pollen is 

 ready, and in that case you can impregnate it ; or if by any 

 accident the pollen from another grape vine should fall upon it, 

 it would be impregnated. These circumstances would very 

 rarely, if ever, occur together ; but still, it is not impossible. 

 There are other cases where spontaneous cross-impregnation is 

 possible, without the aid of man. Suppose you take an Oporto 

 grape, which has naturally defective stamens ; they do not seem 

 to have vigor enough to throw off the calyx in due season, so 

 that oftentimes there are but three or four berries set upon a 

 whole bunch ; and yet the germs were there, and the stigmas 

 were ready to be impregnated. Now those unimpregnated stig- 

 mas might have the pollen from another vine shaken upon them 

 by the wind, or in some other way, and thus cross-impregnation 

 takes place. 



I think the better method is, to watch your vine until some 

 of the calices begin to fall, and then, with a delicate pair of 

 tweezers take them off, and with a pair of sharp scissors cut 

 away the stamens, and impregnate artificially. That can be 



