162 ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 



"That restless energy and ambition, characteristic of Ameri- 

 cans, to improve every branch of industry they may adopt, are 

 dormant with such a people; and from them, or at least from 

 their records, we have no reliable information as to any efforts 

 they may have made to improve the different species of the 

 citrus family. The culture of the orange is, relatively speaking, 

 of recent growth in our own country and with our own people. 

 We are therefore compelled to judge more from analogy than 

 from any positive data obtained from experiments. The pro- 

 duction of new varieties in all horticultural branches, and the 

 improvement of those already obtained, is a science yet in its 

 infancy, and it must remain more or less empirical for years. 



"Time is the great essential element in the prosecution of this 

 science. Unfortunately for us, years have to elapse before re- 

 sults can be obtained to test the correctness of the judgment 

 directing the experiments. The grafting and the budding knife 

 have thus far been found to be the only sure means of repro- 

 ducing and extending chosen varieties of fruit. 



"Years of experience have taught us that the planting of seed 

 of chosen varieties, to reproduce the same, results in failure. 

 Sometimes new varieties, better than the parent stock, are pro- 

 duced. They are almost always inferior, or, if not, produce an 

 entirely new variety of fruit. 



"It is true that nature, in her mysterious process of mixing 

 the pollen of blossoms, has given man the finest varieties of all 

 the fruits ; these he has perpetuated by budding or grafting. 



"This strong tendency to hybridization of the species of all 

 fruits is more especially noticeable in the citrus family. Ac- 

 cording to Risso and Paitearo, monstrosities are often the result 

 of hybridizing the citrus family a strong warning to the 'seed- 

 ling' advocates. If I may be pardoned for digressing, do we 

 not secure in this wonderful process of creating new varieties 

 in the tree family a strong argument in favor of the human de- 

 velopment theory advocated by those master minds, Spencer, 

 Darwin and Tyndall? 'Natural selection, and survival of the 

 fittest,' seems ever to be the forming principle of trees. 



"The apple tree may safely be taken as a guide in judging 

 from analogy the results of budding the orange. 



