l62 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



the thorny and very seedy Trifoliata stock, on which, two feet 

 above the ground, was budded the thornless and seedless Sat- 

 suma, shown alongside. The result was to put seed into the 

 fruit of nearly every Satsuma orange, as well as to increase 

 the hardiness of that variety, thus top-budded. The seeds, 

 when planted, produced apparently sweet orange trees, as far 

 as can be judged from the leaves. While some of the 

 twenty-seven trees are entirely thornless like the Satsuma, 

 others have thorns of varying lengths, from very short to 

 very long, as shown in the second illustration (which is a 

 photograph of four shoots from among the twenty-seven 

 seedlings); and one tree, No. i, actually intermits its thorns, 

 just as grape vines do their tendrils, there being three inter- 

 missions, as shown at the bottom, middle and top, and two 

 thorns between. Moreover, those twenty-seven seedlings 

 have stood a temperature without injury of ten degrees, a 

 degree of cold that no common orange has ever survived. I 

 wish to call particular attention to the leaves designated with 

 a ring, showing plain markings, in their round and split ends, 

 of the Trifoliata leaf, and especially to the small leaf of the 

 hybrid marked 5, which is identical in shape with a part of a 

 leaf of the Trifoliata also marked 5. 



Of course, the most interesting and conclusive part of 

 this experiment has yet to come, in the shape of the fruit. 

 Whether some of these seedlings will take after one parent 

 and some the other, or whether all will be moderately sour 

 and require another cross, for instance with the seedless 

 Navel, is an important question. But, applying this principle 

 to all other kinds of fruits, why may it not be equally true 

 also? I now have experiments under way to find out whether 

 any fruit tree put upon its own roots, like the Trifoliata, by 

 the method of Japan or saddle grafting, shown elsewhere, 

 and then cutting away the stock after the cion has struck root 

 on itself, will not reproduce itself to a great extent from seed 

 at first, and perfectly in a few years, when planted apart from 

 other trees of the same species. How far the principle of 

 heredity will affect the fruit, or how long, remains to be seen. 

 I think we may reasonably conclude that an Elberta peach, 



