76 THE APPLE -TBEE. 



By far the most interesting process connected with, apple 

 culture is the cross fertilization from which have accrued by 

 natural and accidental impact some of our best sorts, such as the 

 "Woodstock Pippin. But in later years T. A. Knight has reduced 

 this hap-hazard force in nature to an artificial factor and work 

 of precision. And to this simple art we greatly owe the splendid 

 variety of fruit we now enjoy, for by this means a far greater 

 degree of variation is obtained than from pips not crossed, 

 though these will vary from the stock 



In the order Rosacece the fruit may always be safely eaten, 

 yet strange to say the honey bee that revels on the apple blossom 

 never alights on a rose. 



The numerous stamens of this great family of plants lie 

 round the pistils, — like the halted caravan on the open plains, 

 where the men lie round in a circle with their women safe in the 

 centre — and the gardiner by removing the native circle of stamens 

 from a very likely flower of a very comely tree of a genial kind, 

 and by introducing ripe bursting anthera from another choice 

 bloom of another choice tree, guarding the while with gauze the 

 emasculated blossom from stranger pollen on the legs of roving 

 bees, may attain results once undreamed of. 



Such was the history of the finest plum we have, Coe's 

 G-olden Drop, a cross between the Green Gage and the Yellow 

 Magnum Bonum. 



It moreover appears that the seedling invariably partakes 

 most of the nature of the parent tree providing the fruitful dust, 

 and the experiment should be made on perfect specimens, for 

 defects are always transmitted. Thus the enterprising gardiner 

 carries the future of his orchard in his hand ! 



The far-seeing Lord Bacon had a vision of what was to 

 come in "the compounding or mixture of kinds." "Wherefore" 

 says he "it were one of the most notable experiments touching 

 plants to find it out, for so you may have great variety of new 

 fruits and fiowers yet unknown. Grafting does it not, that 

 mendeth the fruit or doubleth the flowers but hath not the power 

 to make a new kind, for the scion ever overruleth the stock." 



Bradley about a century later (1718) was the first author to 

 speak of the accomplishment of cross-fertilization, which was 

 first practised by the gardiners of Holland and inlanders, 



