CHAPTER XVI. 



Fruit Changed by Pollination. 



THE almost universally accepted idea is, that the charac- 

 teristics of fruit are never affected or changed by polli- 

 nation the same season. And yet there is nothing more 

 certain than that the contrary is true, and I intend to demon- 

 strate it this season to competent witnesses. I will now give 

 several instances. The first will be an arbor of six Niagara 

 and six Lindley grape vines here in Galveston, owned by Col. 

 S. T. Fontaine. The vines are four years old, and bore a 

 very heavy crop last year, all of which was white except a few 

 stray pink bunches, but not a single genuine Lindley-colored 

 bunch. The Lindley bore the first year and the Niagara did 

 not, and every grape was of the natural red color, but when 

 dominated by the Niagara pollen, the second year, all but a 

 few were white. The second instance of this came under my 

 observation for several years in the yard of N. N. John, of 

 this city, where the Niagara again dominated and changed 

 the Jefferson to white. The third instance was on my own 

 grounds at Hitchcock, where a black grape, the Holmes, 

 grafted on Golden Chasselas, with a shoot of the latter 

 allowed to grow and fruit also, was dominated by the Chas- 

 selas, and the fruit of the Holmes turned to a pale pink. A 

 fourth instance is the following, clipped from a recent issue 

 of The Rural New- Yorker : 



"Some years ago D. S. Marvin, of Watertown, N. Y., set out a 

 Brighton layer, from a dry clay knoll, among some Delawares, where 

 the soil was made moist by slop water. This vine no longer bears 

 Brighton grapes, but the fruit is red, ripening a week later than 

 Brighton. The skin is thicker, and these grapes now keep as well as 

 Catawbas, not deteriorating after picking, like the Brighton, but re- 

 maining firm, with much sprightliness and substance. The leaf is 

 stronger and thicker and the notches less coarse." 



But the grape is not the only fruit thus affected. There 



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