1 30 Plant-Breeding 



eighty-five squash flowers were carefully pollinated with 

 staminate flowers taken from the same vine that bore the 

 pistillate flowers. Only twenty-two of these produced 

 fruit, and of those only seven, or less than one-third, bore 

 good seeds, and in some of these the seeds were few. Now, 

 these twenty-two fruits represented as many different 

 varieties, so that the inability to set fruit with pollen 

 from the same vine is not a peculiarity of a particular 

 variety. The records of the seeds of the seven fruits in 

 1891 are as follows : 



" Fruit No. 1. Four vines were obtained, with four 

 different types, two of them being white, one yellow, and 

 one black. 



" Fruit No. 2. Twenty-three vines. Fifteen types very 

 unlike, twelve being white and three yellow. 



" Fruit No. 3. Two vines. One type of fruit, which is 

 almost like one of the original parents. 



" Fruit No. 4. Thirty-two vines. Six types, differing 

 chiefly in size and shape. 



" Fruit No. 5. Twenty vines. Nineteen types, of which 

 ten were white, eight orange, one striped, and all very unlike. 



"Fruit No. 6. Thirteen vines. Eleven types, eight 

 yellow, two black, one white. 



"Fruit No. 7. One vine. 



"These offspring were just as variable as those from 

 flowers not in-bred and no more likely, apparently, to 

 reproduce the parent. These tests leave me without any 

 method of fixing a pronounced cross of squashes, and lead 

 me to think that the legitimate process of origination of 

 new kinds here, as, indeed, if not in general, is a more 

 gradual process of selection, coupled, perhaps, with minor 

 crossing. 



