CHAPTER IX. 



HYBRIDIZING AND CROSSING. 



These are operations that should demand the atten- 

 tion of every one who undertakes to produce new varie- 

 ties; for when artificially performed, improvements are 

 more certain than if we depend wholly upon the natural 

 variations occurring in vines grown from seeds, which 

 have not been influenced by artificial fertilizing. 



Many of our best varieties of grapes, as well as other 

 fruits, owe their superiority, in a great measure, to the 

 careful manner in which the flowers of the parent plant 

 were fertilized. 



The two words, hybridizing and crossing, are used 

 indiscriminately by many writers in this country, who 

 follow the European custom of calling every plant that 

 shows a mixture of two varieties a hybrid. This is an 

 error which we should avoid, for although the mode of 

 operation in producing them is, in both instances, pre- 

 cisely the same, the results are entirely different. 



A hybrid grape, properly speaking, is a mixture of 

 two distinct species, not of two varieties of the same spe- 

 cies. For instance, if we should take a Concord grape, 

 which belongs to the Vitis labrusca species, and the 

 common frost grape (Vitis cordifolia), and by fertilizing 

 the one with the other, produce a plant with the charac- 

 teristics of both parents, we should then have a proper 

 hybrid. But if we should fertilize the Isabella with the 

 Concord, we would have a cross between two varieties of 

 the same species. Hybridizing, then, is the mixing of 

 two species, and crossing, or cross-breeding (as it is 

 termed), is the mixing of two varieties. 



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