How Domestic Varieties Originate 233 



Ordinarily, if the operator does not find satisfactory plants 

 among the seedlings of any cross of fruit trees, he roots 

 up the whole batch as profitless. But if he were to allow 

 the best plants to stand and were to sow seeds from them, 

 the second generation might produce something more to 

 his liking. But it is generally quicker to make another 

 cross and to try the experiment over again, than to wait 

 for unpromising seedlings to bear. This repeated repeti- 

 tion of the experiment, however, continual crossing 

 and sowing and uprooting, is gambling. Throwing dice 

 to see what will turn up is a comparable proceeding. 

 The sowing of uncrossed seed is little better. Peter M. 

 Gideon sowed over a bushel of apple seed, and one seed 

 produced the Wealthy apple. 1 D. B. Wier raised a mil- 

 lion seedlings of soft maple, and one plant of the lot had 

 finely divided leaves, and is now Wier's Cut-leaved maple. 

 Teas' Weeping mulberry, which is now so deservedly 

 popular, was, as Mr. Teas tells me, "merely an accidental 

 seedling." So this explains why the production of new 

 varieties of fruits is always chance, while a skilled man 

 can sit in his study in the winter time and . picture to 

 himself a new bean or muskmelon, and then go out in the 

 next three or four summers and produce it. 



9. If it is desired to employ crossing as a direct means 



1 The facts in the origination of the Wealthy apple, as related to me 

 by Mr. Gideon, are these : he first planted a bushel of apple seeds .and 

 then each year, for nine years, he planted enough to give a thousand trees. 

 At the end of ten years, all the seedlings had perished (this was in Min- 

 nesota) except one hard seedling crab. Then a small lot of seeds of 

 apples and crab apples was obtained in Maine, and from these the 

 Wealthy came. There were only about fifty seeds in the batch of crab 

 seed which gave the Wealthy ; but before this variety was obtained, 

 much over a bushel of seed had been sown. 



