1885.] APPENDIX. 53 



pollen on the quality of the fruit, and their reports were so uniformly 

 in accord with the results of my own investigations that I felt 

 warranted in writing the following paragraph in addition to those 

 already quoted, to wit : " It is often asserted that the Hovey is hetter 

 when fertilized with one kind than with another, and may not this be 

 true, further than that of being fully supplied with pollen ?" 



Since making ray first experiments for the purpose of determining 

 the influence of the pollen on the strawberry. I have observed many 

 instances of changes in the color, form and flavor of other kinds of 

 fruits as well, which as it appeared to me were directly traceable to 

 the influence of pollen, although it must be admitted that with our 

 improved cultivated fruits we must expect an occasional reappearance 

 of ancestral characteristics which may mislead us in attributing certain 

 results to a fictitious cause. Still, when a branch of an apple-tree 

 generally producing fruit with a smooth skin bears russet apples and 

 we can find no other cause for the change but the close proximity of a 

 tree bearing russets we are inclined to believe that pollen has had 

 something to do in producing the change observed. Because similar 

 or like results are not produced every year only indicates that self- 

 fertilization is the rule with the flowers of such fruits as the apple, and 

 it is only when the pollen of a particular branch or whole tree is less 

 potent than that on a neighboring one that cross-fertilizing occurs. 



I doubt not that every observing practical member of the American 

 Pomological Society can call to mind many such instances of cross- 

 fertilization amona: our larger cultivated fruits as well as among 

 gai'den vegetables, especially with melons and squashes, for with the 

 latter the influence of the pollen is more readily seen to extend beyond 

 the seed than with such small-fruits as the strawberry. 



That our vegetable physiologists have given us very little informa- 

 tion on this subject is not at all strange, for very few of them have 

 ever had their attention drawn to it ; and furthermore, the extent of the 

 influence of pollen must be studied in the field and garden and not in 

 the laboratory or with dried plants and fruits. 



In a few of the more recent works of vegetable physiologists it is 

 admitted that the influence of the pollen extends to the entire forma- 

 tion of what is commonly called the fruit. Julius Locke, in his " Text- 

 book of Botany," edition of 1882, page 495, says: "The increase in 

 size of the ovary, which is frequently enormous (in curcurbita. cocus, 

 etc., several thousand times in volume), shows in a striking manner 

 that the results of fertilization, especially in the carpels, placentte and 

 seeds ; but very frequently similar changes result also in other paits. 

 Thus, it is the receptacle that constitutes the fleshy swelling which is 

 called the strawberry, on the surface of which are seated the small true 

 fruits." Also, on page 594: "But sometimes the long series of deep- 

 seated changes induced by fertilization extends also to parts which do 

 not belong to the ovary, and even to some which have never belonged 

 to the flower." Among the plants so affected he mentions the tig, 

 strawberry and mulberry. 



Then again, page 900, he says: "The process of development 

 brought about by fertilization or the union of the reproductive cells is 

 5 



