ODDS AND ENDS 333 



fruits, and eliminating their- defects, without recourse to the 

 substitution of new varieties in their places. 



This question has not yet been properly investigated at Wo- 

 burn ; all that has been done in the matter at present is to work 

 a number of stocks with buds from trees which have had through- 

 out many years a bad fruiting record, and from others which 

 have had a good record. The worked stocks, during the three 

 seasons after the budding, showed an average growth of 23 per 

 cent, in the case of one variety, and 29 per cent, in that of 

 another variety, in favour of the trees worked from the bad- 

 fruiting individuals. Assuming that the bad fruiters were good 

 growers which was simply a probable assumption, as measure- 

 ments of growth were not available the evidence is in the 

 direction of the characteristics of the individual tree being 

 perpetuated through the buds. 



Another question connected with the raising of trees by bud- 

 ding or grafting is being investigated at Woburn : the life of 

 any individual tree is limited : can it be prolonged indefinitely 

 by budding or grafting a portion of it onto a fresh root-stock? 

 or is such repeated rejuvenation of the individual accompanied 

 by any modification or deterioration of its characteristics ? does 

 a variety wear out, just as a given tree wears out ? These 

 questions are being investigated by working root-stocks every 

 year with certain varieties of apples and pears, using, in one 

 case, scions derived from particular parent trees, and in the 

 other, scions from those worked in the preceding season, so that 

 at the end of, say, twenty years, there will be two collections of 

 trees of corresponding ages, but in one case they will have been 

 grafted up to twenty times more often than in the other case. 

 These two sets of trees, and especially the character of the fruit 

 from them, will then be compared. It is certainly in accord- 

 ance with experience derived from the continuous growing 

 of plants such as the potato, and also in accordance with our 

 early recollections, of the qualities of certain varieties of fruits, to 

 believe that varieties do gradually deteriorate in the absence 

 of 'any reproduction by raising from seed. 



