FIXING GOOD TRAITS 



They are propagated by grafting or budding, 

 or by rooting the stem or dividing the roots or 

 planting the tuber. And the reason in each case 

 is the same. The perfected variety originated 

 from a single individual that combined a large 

 number of desirable qualities, and the entire 

 company of individual representatives of that 

 variety, though they be numbered in millions, 

 are not really descendants, but offshoots, of the 

 original individual. 



Each cion or bud from a given tree will 

 produce fruit precisely like that from the tree 

 from which it is taken, because it is itself a part 

 of the tree. And however widely new cions and 

 buds from the first cion may be disseminated, 

 they carry the same traits, because, rightly con- 

 sidered, they are a part of the same individual 

 organism. The Seckel pear tree that grows in 

 your dooryard is, from the standpoint of heredity, 

 a tree of the same generation with untold thou- 

 sands of other Seckel pear trees that have grown 

 here and there across the hemispheres for more 

 than a hundred years — or since the first one 

 appeared in the orchard of the Pennsylvanian 

 whose name they bear. 



Were it not for the contradiction of terms, one 

 might say that all Seckel pear trees constitute a 

 single tree. 



[235] 



