Originating New Varieties Hybridization. 155 



Mr. J. M. Merrick, Jr., recommends this same isolation of the pistil- 

 late plant under glass. 



It should be distinctly understood that while several perfect-flowering 

 plants may be placed under the sash with a pistillate, the pollen of only 

 one of these can fertilize a pistil. Mixing pollen from different kinds 

 will never produce in a seedling the qualities of three or more varieties. 

 The seedling is the product of two kinds only. Inclosing the plants 

 in a frame insures that all the pistils are fertilized by one~or the other 

 of the perfect-flowered varieties that are so fine as to promise a better 

 combination of excellence than yet exists. The appearance of the 

 seedling will probably show which of the kinds formed the combination, 

 but often there would be uncertainty on this point, I think. 



Mr. E. W. Durand, who sent out the Black Defiance, Great 

 American, Beauty, Pioneer, and several others, claims that the " true 

 method is to propagate by pairs, each parent possessing certain dis- 

 tinctive features." "My course," he writes, in a paper read before the 

 N. J. State Horticultural Society, "is to select my pistillates after years 

 of trial, subject them to severe tests, and place alongside of each such 

 a staminate as I think will harmonize and produce a certain desired effect. 

 Another pistillate plant, of the same variety, is placed far away from the 

 last, with a different staminate, and so on, till I exhaust the staminates or 

 perfect-flowering kinds that I wish to test with that pistillate variety. Of 

 late years, I have used but two or three kinds of pistillate plants, and 

 they are a combination of excellence. I never show them to my most 

 intimate friends, and the public know nothing about them. The years of 

 trial and experiment necessary to produce such plants must necessarily 

 discourage a beginner; yet it is the only course that will lead to success." 



I think that Mr. Durand takes too gloomy a view of the subject, and 

 I can see no reason why any one starting with such pistillates as the 

 Golden Defiance, Champion and others, may not originate a variety 

 superior to any now in existence. At the same time, I must caution 

 against over-sanguine hopes. Mr. Durand states the interesting fact that 

 he generally produces 3,000 new varieties annually, and including the 

 year of '76, he had already originated about 50,000 seedlings. While 

 some of these have already secured great celebrity, like the Great 

 American, I do not know of one that promises to maintain a continued 

 and national popularity. I regard his old Black Defiance and the later 

 Pioneer as his best seedlings, so far as I have seen them. Very many 

 others do not have even his success. We may have to experiment for 

 years before we obtain a seedling worth preserving; nevertheless, in the 



