EVOLUTION IN HORTICULTURE. 177 



EVOLUTION IN HORTICULTURE. 



BY PROF. CHAKLES E. BESSEY. 



There is no money in this talk of mine, but I trust that there may 

 be some suggestions of value to the horticulturists. And by horti- 

 culturist I mean not the man who is in horticulture for money alone, 

 but who has a love for the study. 



The horticulturist is an evolutionist, continually bringing about an 

 evolution, bringing about great changes to suit his own tastes; not 

 content with nature, he insists in modifying her to suit his require- 

 ments. In his hand a plant is pliant as wax. Now this phase of the 

 work, this taking plants and changing them, is what I want to talk 

 about to-day. While you are growing fruit for profit you are each 

 contributing to this evolution, which is continually progressing. 



I have picked out a few of the prominent fruits on which to base 

 our talk to-day, and in which such vast changes have been made by 

 the horticulturist. 



Away back thousands of years, this apple we now admire and eat, 

 or rather its ancestor, was a crab-like fruit, sour, bitter, and hard, 

 scarcely fit to be eaten. There are still growing wild crab fruits, of 

 which this is a good example. Europe is the home of the wild apple 

 and it has been used there for thousands of years ; when man first set 

 his teeth in the apple no one knows. 



In clearing away the debris covering the lake dwellers' inhabitations 

 many remnants are being discovered; they are finding remnants of all 

 sorts of things, and among these, remnants of apples; I don't know 

 how they could remain so long in a recognizable form, but they do. 



These Swiss lake dwellers occupied these inhabitations a number of 

 thousand years ago, but the remnants show that they had a small va- 

 riety of apple, about three-fourths to one and one-fourth inches long 

 by one and one-fourth to one and one-half inches in diameter across. 

 The English wild apple is about this size, of poor taste and very little 

 to attract the eye or the palate; hard, late, acerb, green ; tree small 

 and ill-shaped. Now we have a hundred, a thousand. 



Member — Thirty-six hundred now, Professor. 

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