338 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
clusters had many abortive fruits, and showed every 
gradation of loss up to 80 or 90 per cent. No elus- 
ter was seen in which all the berries were abortive. 
With the check vine perfect clusters were numerous, 
and abortive berries were comparatively few. The 
whole loss of fruit on the sprayed vine cannot be 
computed by comparing the amount of perfect with 
abortive fruit, because some blossoms must have 
failed to form even abortive fruit, and some of the 
abortive fruits dropped before the grapes were gath- 
ered. It should be borne in mind, therefore, that the 
total loss of fruit from the spraying is not repre- 
sented in the following figures. A comparison of 
the fruit of the two vines shows the following re- 
sults: 
“1, Counting all berries, whether perfect or abor- 
tive, the average weight of a berry from the sprayed 
vine was 8.5 grains, and the average weight of a 
berry from the check vine was 17.5 grains, showing 
a difference of 106 per cent. 
“2. The amount of abortive berries was compared 
with the perfect berries of each vine, and 60 per cent 
of the fruit from the sprayed vine was_ abortive, 
while but 21 per cent of the fruit from the check 
vine was abortive.” 
Halsted* has also made observations upon the 
influence of weather upon pollination, and finds that 
continued wet weather at blossoming time seems, in 
most cases, to lessen the setting of the fruit. 
*Special Bull. C, N. J. Exp. Sta. (1889), and Rept. for 1889, p. 230, and 
Rept. for 1890, yp. 330. 
