October 19, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



495 



The Supposed Correlations of Quality in Fruits. 



AT the Rochester meeting of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, Professor L. H. 

 Bailey read a paper on this subject, the greater part of 

 which we herewith reproduce : 



High quality in fruits, by which we mean that combination 

 of fine texture, tenderness and pronounced agreeable flavor 

 which renders them fit for dessert, is supposed to exist at the 

 expense of some other character. The best fruits are thought 

 to be tender in tree, unproductive, to lack vigor, or to be 

 small or dull in color. This notion is one of the dogmas of 

 horticulture which has passed down from generation to gen- 

 eration unchallenged, and it is the parent of the common as- 

 sumption that a first-rate market fruit is almost necessarily one 

 that is indifferent or poor in quality. The correct understand- 

 ing of this general belief lies at the foundation of all advance 

 in horticulture, for if variation in quality is always correlated 

 with variation in some other character, we should be able 

 to breed directly for quality by means of simple selection, 

 taking seeds, for instance, from the tenderest tree or the least 

 productive, to secure the highest quality in fruit. But we 

 must first determine if the law of Goethe and St. Hilaire, that 

 the sum of activity in any plant is fixed, with variation occur- 

 ring only within the limits, is true, or if we can force the 

 l^lant beyond its original bounds, and increase the sum of its 

 activities. We must'determine if the independent variation of 

 organs which Wallace has found to exist in nature, obtains also 

 in the garden, or if, once inside the garden-fence, the plant as- 

 sumes a law of development in parallelisms. It therefore be- 

 comes a philosophical question. 



Now, there are about seven characters which are commonly 

 held to be correlated with marked increase in quality, three of 

 which belong to the fruit itself, and the remaining four to the 

 plant as a whole. These are : Decrease in size or seed-pro- 

 duction or loss of high color in the fruit, tenderness, lack of 

 vigor, short life or unproductiveness in the tree. 



There are two methods of discussing my subject, the statis- 

 tical and the philosophical. Fortunately, statistics are at hand 

 for our purpose. I have selected as the basis of my investiga- 

 tions the well-known fruit-catalogue of the Michigan Horticul- 

 tural Society. This is almost wholly the labor of T. T. Lyon, 

 whose discriminating judgment upon tlie merits of fruits is 

 not excelled in this country. In this catalogue all die varieties 

 are graded upon a decimal scale in three distinct categories — 

 dessert, cooking and market. Each variety is also rated in 

 size and color. Mr. Lyon's standard of excellence in quality 

 for dessert is high, and only the very choicest varieties reach 

 figvn-es nine and ten. It therefore offers an opportunity for the 

 selection of extreme types and the elimination of all such in- 

 termediate ones as would be likely to complicate and obscure 

 the results.. The catalogue is also extensive enough to afford 

 a safe basis of estimate; it contains 219 varieties of Apples, 

 seventeen of Blackberries, fifty-two of Cherries, sixteen of Cur- 

 rants and Gooselierries, forty-seven of Grapes, seventy of 

 Peaches, sixty-three of Pears, thirty-four of Plums, thirty of 

 Raspberries and sixty-one of Strawberries. 



I have examined for comparison the records of the size 

 and color of all those varieties which scale nine and ten for 

 dessert. There are thirty-eight varieties of Apples graded nine 

 and ten, of which only three are rated small, while seven are 

 large and two are very large. Those rated as medium to 

 small are two, and those medium to large are three. Of these 

 thirty-eight entries, therefore, six, or less than one-sixth, would 

 be called small apples, and thirteen, or over one-third, are 

 large apples, the remaining ones being classed as medium or 

 intermediate. In other words, there are over twice as many 

 large apples as small ones of very high quality in this list; 

 and there is every reason to believe that what is true of the 219 

 varieties here considered is also approximately true of all varie- 

 ties in cultivation, tor the list contains a very large proportion 

 of the total number of varieties of high quality. Of the seven 

 Blackberries rated nine and ten, five are large, one is medium 

 and one is medium to small. Of the sixteen best Cherries, 

 eight are large, two very large, one medium to lai'ge, and none 

 ot'them are small. Of the three Currants, one is large and the 

 others are medium, and the two Gooseberries are large or me- 

 dium to large. Among the eight best Grapes, there are three 

 large-bunch varieties and one small-bunch. Of twenty-one 

 best Peaches, none are small, twelve, or over half, are large, 

 two are very large, and one is medium to large. Among 

 twenty-one best Pears, five, or uearly a quarter, are small, 

 three are medium to small, while six are large and two are 

 medium to large. In this instance, the numbers of large and 



small are equal. In the six best Plums, but one is small. 

 Of eight Raspberries, none are small, but four are large and 

 two are very large. In the twenty-three best Strawberries, 

 none are small, while six are large, and eleven, or nearly one- 

 half, are very large. 



Tliere can be but one conclusion from these figures, and 

 that is that quality is not associated with size of fruit. If the 

 figures were to be interpreted as they stand, it would appear 

 that increase in quality is usually associated with increase in 

 size, but it must be remembered that small fruits areless likely 

 to be propagated extensively than are large ones. It is only 

 when small fruits possess some superlative merits, as in the 

 case of the Early Joe Apple and the Seckel and Summer 

 Doyenne Pears, that they are worth cultivating in competition 

 with larger fruits. And thus it would be useless to attempt to 

 draw any conclusions from the listed sizes of poor apples, for 

 poor small apples are not often perpetuated. We need not re- 

 sort to figures to show that increase in quality is not a neces- 

 sary attendant of decrease in size. Every fruit-grower who 

 stops to reason upon the question must recall the fact that 

 "seedling" Apples are usually small and very poor in quality. 

 The fallacy of associating size and flavor, as of other supposed 

 parallelisms, arises from the fact that individual instances 

 have been widened into generalizations. We wonder at the 

 smallness of the Russets, the Early Joes, the Delawares, the 

 Seckels and the Doyennes, but we forget the Fall Pippins, the 

 Hubbardstons, the Spys, the Greenings, the Brightons, the 

 Anjous and the Boscs. But if it is a fallacy to associate in- 

 crease of quality and decrease of size, it is perhaps a greater 

 one to associate high quality with low color. A study of the 

 preceding tables shows that red is a very prominent character 

 in all the fruits, and wholly green fruits, even among the ap- 

 ples, are rare. 



In many varieties the seed production has decreased, and it 

 has been held by soiue that there is a correlation between it 

 and quality. The chief exponent of this hypothesis is Dr. E. Lewis 

 Sturtevant, who outlined his views before the American Pomo- 

 logical Society at its last Boston meeting. He has madeafuller 

 discussion of the subject in a recent paper, in which he asserts 

 that "there seems to exist in fruits a correlation between seed- 

 lessness and quality, especially when that quality is expressed by 

 the term tenderness of tissue. In fruits of fine quality, ten- 

 derness of the seed-coating often seems a marked character- 

 istic, as in grapes, where the seeds of the improved varieties 

 are distinctly softer and more brittle than in those of the wild 

 species; as in peaches and plums, where the tendency of a 

 split stone is often noticeable in fruit of varieties of high 

 quality." I have made no studies concerning the strength or 

 tliickness of seed-walls in cultivated fruits, but I do not doubt 

 that there is a general tendency toward fragility. But I cannot 

 look upon this tendency, if it exists, as in any way related to 

 quality. It is undoubtedly due to constant selection for small- 

 seeded fruits. Concerning the relations of seed-production to 

 amelioration, I have made some careful studies. I have 

 found, as a rule, that the cultivated varieties of Apples contain 

 more seeds than the wild European Crabs. Forty specimens 

 of fruit of these Crab-seedlings contained a total of 256 

 seeds, or an average of six and two-fifths seeds to the 

 fruit. Forty Northern Spy apples yielded four hundred and 

 eighty-one seeds, or an average of over twelve to the fruit. 

 Normally, the apple contains five carpels, and each carpel con- 

 tains two seeds, but some of these Spys had fifteen seeds and 

 one had eighteen. And yet the Northern Spy ranks ten in Mr. 

 Lyon's dessert scale. I had all the seeds counted in a pound 

 of each of thirty samples of tomatoes, representing twenty-six 

 varieties of very different degrees of amelioration. The low- 

 est comparative seed-production was in the Cherry Tomato, 

 which is very near the wild type. There was found to be a 

 general, but uncertain, increase in seed-production as the 

 variety departs from the Cherry Tomato, but this increase 

 bears no relation whatever to the extent of departure. Now 

 and then an orchard-fruit appears which is almost or wholly 

 seedless, but it is not necessarily of high quality. So-called 

 coreless apples and pears occasionally appear, but none of 

 them have ever had sufficient merit to warrant their extensive 

 propagation. Barren mentions two no-core apples, one of 

 which is recommended only for kitchen use, and the other is 

 characterized as worthless. I do not wish to discourage the 

 sowing of seeds from few-seeded fruits, for the practice is 

 probably a means toward still further eliminating seeds, but I 

 see no reason to expect any unusual increase of quality from 

 this source. Seed-production appears to me to be subject to 

 the same laws of variation as other attributes of plants, and it 

 appears independently of other characters, in the same manner 

 as size and color. 



