merely round white, white sweet, white transparent, &c., names 

 without individuality. Fortunately, a few names have been fixed 

 by commercial demand, and are known by the same names 

 throughout Russia. 



One great difficulty in Russian nomenclature arises from the 

 strong family likeness of seedlings of like parentage. A hardy 

 race of the apple, seemingly more nearly allied to the wild form 

 than the cultivated apples of Western Europe, has been grown for 

 many centuries by seedling production, and has been reproducing 

 itself from seed. Yet this is not strange news to us. Some 

 families of apples, even when surrounded by apples of other types, 

 have a strong tendency to reproduce themselves in their seedlings. 

 The Gilpin or Little Romanite, Mr. Budd tells me, has been 

 producing seedlings like itself in the West. The Calville family, 

 too, is a striking example. Our Fameuse has a large progeny of 

 strong parental likeness, and many think that two or more dis- 

 tinct varieties are commonly propagated under this name. 



In Russia there is no standard of nomenclature, no authority 

 that answers to the American Pomological Society or Downing, 

 yet fruits received from that country must be propagated on this 

 continent, as far as possible, under fixed, unchangeable names. 

 The collections of apples on the farm of the State Agricultural 

 College at Ames, Iowa, already number over 400 varieties, inclu- 

 sive, no doubt, of many duplicates ; additions, too, are being made 

 from different parts of Russia. The collections received a year or 

 two ago embraced most, not all, yet most of the best varieties 

 grown in Russia. We must have, on this continent, one fixed 

 standard of nomenclature, and it would seem best that it should 

 emanate from Ames. 



The converting of the Russian names into English needs 

 some thought. We have not the sounds in English to render 

 them exactly. In this matter our aim must be simplicity. We 

 need names our farmers can spell and pronounce rather than a 

 labored but more accurate rendering of the Russian sound. We 

 have usually fallen in with the spelling in the list published by 

 the Department of Agriculture at Washington, especially where 



mean 



