BREEDING AND ORIGINATION OF NEW FRUITS. 121 



and perplexing fact that, so far, he has been entirely baffled 

 in all his efforts to produce an apple, peach, pear or apricot 

 that would compare with the hundreds of old standard varie- 

 ties of those fruits, all chance seedlings, which Nature in her 

 playful, kindly moods scattered here and there all over the 

 country, in old fields, fence-corners, back yards and other 

 out-of-the-way places, apparently in a spirit of fun, to chal- 

 lenge our admiration, tickle our palates and yet mock all our 

 efforts to equal them. 



Wipe from our catalogues all Nature's apples, and what 

 have we left? Only Peter Gideon's "Wealthy," grown by 

 him, but yet a natural seedling. Next cut out her peaches, 

 and that industry would so completely disappear that even 

 a single "cobbler" would be an impossibility. In pears we 

 would fare just as badly, while if any hybridizer ever grew 

 an apricot of any value I never heard of it. But having be- 

 come accustomed to these most astonishing and inexplicable 

 facts, we cease to wonder, and yet when we stop to think of 

 the amazing strides of recent years in all the other arts and 

 sciences, the wonderful discoveries in light, sound, elec- 

 tricity, medicine, machinery, printing and a hundred other 

 things, the horticulturist must hang his head in shame, for 

 even the achievements of a Burbank, in practical value, sink 

 into utter insignificance beside them. Wipe out all that he 

 and the many other meritorious, though less known workers 

 in the field of scientific experimental hybridization have done, 

 and it would not create a ripple of excitement in the horticul- 

 tural world, so lavishly has Nature showered upon us from 

 her hidden store the beautiful and delicious fruits that now 

 fill the pages of our catalogues to repletion. 



But, while others may not have worried in the effort to 

 find out just how Nature worked these fruit miracles in the 

 past, and is still working them like a juggler right before our 

 eyes, and yet we fail to "catch on," it has worried me be- 

 yond measure to see her stamp her seal of superiority upon 

 some old chance seedling that happened to escape notice, 

 and lo ! a Baldwin, Spy or Jonathan apple, or an Elberta 

 peach springs up to astonish the world by its excellence, 



