CROSS-BREEDING. 9 



universally pursued now by skilful cultivators, in producing 

 new and finer varieties of plants ; and which Mr. Knight, the 

 most distinguished horticulturist of the age, so successfully prac- 

 tised on fruit trees. 



Cross-breeding. 



In the blossoms of fruit-trees, and of most other plants, the 

 seed is the offspring of the stamens and pistil, which may be 

 considered the male and female parents, growing in the same 

 flower. Cross-breeding is, then, nothing more than removing 

 out of the blossom of a fruit tree the stamens, or male parents, 

 and bringing those of another, and different variety of fruit, and 

 dusting the pistil or female parent with them, a process suffi- 

 ciently simple, but which has the most marked effect on the seeds 

 produced. It is only within about fifty years that cross-breeding 

 has been practised ; but Lord Bacon, whose great mind seems 

 to have had glimpses into every dark corner of human know- 

 ledge, finely foreshadowed it. " The compounding or mixture 

 of plants is not found out, which, if it were, is more at command 

 than that of living creatures ; wherefore, it were one of the 

 most notable discoveries touching plants to find it out, for so you 

 may have great varieties of fruits and flowers yet unknown." 



In figure 1, is shown the blossom of the 

 / Cherry. The central portion, a, connected 



directly with the young fruit, is the pistil. 



The numerous surrounding threads, 5, are the 

 > stamens. The summit of the stamen is called 



the anther, and secretes the powdery substance 



called pollen. The pistil has at its base the 

 1. embryo fruit, and at its summit, the stigma. 



The use of the stamens* is to fertilize the young seed contained 

 at the base of the pistil : and if we fertilize the pistil of one variety 

 of fruit by the pollen of another, we shall obtain a new variety 

 partaking intermediately of the qualities of both parents. Thus, 

 among fruits owing their origin directly to cross-breeding, Coe's 

 Golden Drop Plum, was raised from the Green Gage, impreg- 

 nated by the Magnum Bonum, or Egg plum ; and the Elton 

 cherry, from the Bigarrieu, impregnated by the White Heart.* 

 Mr. Knight was of opinion that the habits of the new variety 

 would always be found to partake most strongly of the constitu- 

 tion and habits of the female parent. Subsequent experience 

 does not fully confirm this, and it would appear that the parent 



* The seedlings sometimes most resemble one parent sometimes the other ; 

 but more frequently share the qualities of both. Mr. Coxe describes an 

 Apple, a cross between a Newtown Pippin and a Russet, the fruit of which 

 resembled externally at one end the Russet and at the other the Pippin, 

 and the flavour at either end corresponded exactly with the character of the 

 exteriour 



1* 



