NATIONAL COUNCIL OF HORTICULTURE 33 



These conditions of wide variance between the two classes of men 

 as to knowledge, methods and aims will explain the state of mild con- 

 tempt frequently shown by each for the other. The commercial breeder 

 takes a tumble when he attempts to draw scientific conclusions from 

 his work, and the scientist is often left at the post when he ventures 

 to discuss or assign commercial values. 



It is far from my intent to belittle the work of the scientist. He 

 has worked miracles and is doing so daily. What future work in the 

 close study of the breeding of plants will do, no man can say. It is 

 safe to believe, however, that many problems, the answers to which we 

 cannot even guess at present, will be solved. At the risk of being 

 called a Philistine, however, I am compelled to say that, so far as 

 regards the commercial breeder of florists' plants, the scientist, so 

 far as science has been assimilated, has done little more for him than 

 to enable him in certain cases to make a little shrewder guess. The 

 term scientific breeding, as applied to our subject, is a misnomer. The 

 breeding of florists' flowers remains today almost a pure art. 



There are two principal recognized methods of breeding florists' 

 flowers, by selection to fix a type and by cross breeding. The two 

 methods are not so different as they might seem. Success in each de- 

 pends barring occasional accident on the same qualities in the oper- 

 ator. The cross may almost be considered a minor matter. It is the 

 fine, almost instinctive, power for the perception of minute variations, 

 both progressive and retrogressive, on which most largely depends suc- 

 cess, and the lack of it in either case means failure. 



This same power of minute observation enables the cross breeder 

 to become acquainted, as it were, with his subjects, to learn their indi- 

 vidual potencies and combining powers and year by year, if he is 

 careful about introducing foreign blood, to predict more and more 

 closely the results of his crosses; and yet he will often be unable to 

 give to you or me any good and sufficient reason why he selects or 

 rejects, or why makes or avoids certain crosses, any more than the 

 painter can give you rule or reason for all the varying form or color 

 in his masterpiece. 



Breeding and propagating in floriculture have widely varying ob- 

 jects. One is a process for producing (I had almost said creating) 

 new forms; the other is a process for increasing the number of indi- 

 viduals of one form. An attempt to discuss methods of propagation 

 is unnecessary. 



Florists' plants that are propagated by seed do not generally de- 

 teriorate for long periods, as the seed is commonly grown by expert 

 specialists, carefully rogued and kept up to standard. In the plants 

 commonly propagated from cuttings, rapid deterioration is often no- 

 ticed. This is due to one or several of many causes. A poor cutting 

 may be taken from a good plant, or an apparently good cutting from 

 a starved, sickly or overfed plant. The cutting may be weakened by 

 too high a temperature in the propagating bed, or by having to sustain 

 itself too long without roots by reason of too low a temperature in the 

 sand, or by remaining too long after rooting without potting. At- 



