24 BULLETIN 623, U. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 



rag is of medium quantity and the juiee fairly abundant and of fair 

 quality. The fruits are seedless and have navels of ordinary size. 

 The flattened shape of these fruits makes them poorly adapted for 

 packing under prevailing conditions; otherwise, this strain is equally 

 as good as the Washington strain in commercial quality. It occurs 

 as single fruit and limb variations in Washington, Thomson, and 

 other trees and as individual trees. 



DRY STRAIN. 



In addition to the 13 strains described above, one other, the Dry 

 strain, might be added to this list. The trees show a finely branched 

 arrangement, somewhat resembling that of the Unproductive strain. 

 The habit of growth of the trees is erect and the foliage is dense, with 

 small sharply pointed leaves. 



The fruits, illustrations of which are shown in Plate XIV, usually 

 are globular or oblong and of small to medium size; the rinds are very 

 thick and very coarse in texture and usually are yellowish orange 

 in color. The rag is abundant and coarse, and the juice is very 

 scant, often hardly enough to measure, and of very inferior quality. 

 The fruits are seedless and the navels usually medium to large. 

 This strain has been found to occur in some orchards as individual 

 fruit and limb sports in trees of the Washington strain. In some few 

 cases under observation a considerable proportion of the trees in 

 the orchards are of this strain, making the crop as a whole of very 

 inferior commercial value. 



INDIVIDUAL FRUIT VARIATIONS. 



The individual fruit variations found in the trees of the Wash- 

 ington or other strains are of fundamental importance in consider- 

 ing the origin of the various strains under prevailing conditions. 



In the first performance-record work with Washington strain trees, 

 it was found during the process of assorting the fruits that occasion- 

 ally one or more fruits, very distinct and different from the Washing- 

 ton strain, such as those of the Golden Nugget, Australian, or Thom- 

 son strain, occurred in the crop. This condition led to a careful 

 study of the occurrence of these fruit variations in trees of the Wash- 

 ington and other strains before picking. It was soon found that 

 these individual fruit variations, such as a Golden Nugget in a Wash- 

 ington strain tree, corresponded in all particulars to the fruits borne 

 by Golden Nugget trees in the orchards in which the performance- 

 record plats were located. 



One of the first and most important individual fruit variations 

 observed in Washington strain trees in 1910 in one of the performance- 

 record plats was an Australian fruit. Shortly after the discovery 

 of this single variation in the crop of a Washington performance- 

 record tree, a limb in a near-by Washington tree was found to bear 



