l6o THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



our efforts to originate new varieties, do we not select our 

 seed from perhaps a Bartlett pear, an Elberta peach, or a 

 Baldwin apple, grafted or budded on some common, scrub 

 seedling stock, and then are greatly surprised to find the 

 children inferior to the parents? I will now give a plain case 

 of stock and scion hybridism which is of peculiar interest, 

 because it furnishes an almost perfect demonstration of this 

 most important principle, which, if true in this instance, 

 ought to hold equally good with all other fruits. 



About seven years ago, in rny first experiments with the 

 Satsuma orange, I found that a temperature of eighteen 

 degrees killed it to the ground, though it had been falsely 

 claimed to have stood a temperature of twelve degrees in 

 California. Having about five hundred Trifoliata stocks, 

 which I had planted for budding before I found this out, and 

 finding the Satsuma too tender when grafted low down in the 

 ground, the idea occurred to me that, as the Trifoliata was 

 perfectly hardy, a deciduous orange, and went to rest more 

 completely and remained so later than the Satsuma, if the 

 buds were inserted about two feet above ground, perhaps the 

 tops would be unable to stimulate a movement of the sap in 

 the body so early as if budded near the ground. If it could 

 not, then the Satsuma would be more hardy than when 

 grafted low down ; for the whole question of the hardiness of 

 orange trees in winter here is the condition of the sap. So, 

 acting on this notion, I top-budded the whole lot except four, 

 which I budded as low down as possible for trial. The buds 

 all made a good growth the next season, but in the following 

 January, quite a severe freeze occurred, and in a few days the: 

 four low-budded trees showed severe damage, and in a week 

 were all dead, while not a shoot on the top-budded trees was 

 hurt. Overjoyed at this, the whole lot was taken up care- 

 fully with small balls of earth, and set out in a grove to fruit, 

 where they remained, grew finely for four years, until killed, 

 and bore quite a number of oranges. When the fruit was 

 ripe, being too few to sell, we ate them, and nearly all had 

 seed, some oranges having as many as three, though it is well 

 known that the fruit from low-grafted trees is practically 



