22 The Rural Library. 



lately through the work of Munson and others. But it must be remembered 

 that grapes are naturally exceedingly variable and the specific limits are not 

 well known, and that hybridization among them lacks much of that definite- 

 ness which ordinarily attaches to the subject. In pears there is the Kieffer 

 class. In apples, peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, quinces, currants, goose- 

 berries, blackberries, dewberries, there are no commercial hybrids. The 

 strawberry is doubtful. Some of the raspberries, like Caroline and Shaffer, 

 appear to be hybrids between the red and black species. Hybrids have been 

 produced between the raspberry and blackberry by two or three persons, but 

 they possess no promise of economic results. Among all the list of garden 

 vegetables — plants that are propagated by seeds — I do not know of a single 

 authentic hybrid ; and the same is true of wheat — unless the Carman wheat- 

 rye varieties become prominent, oats, the grasses, and other farm-crops. 

 But among ornamental plants there are many ; and it is a significant fact that 

 the most numerous, most marked, and most successful hybrids occur in the 

 plants most carefully cultivated and protected — those, in other words, which 

 are farthest removed from all untoward circumstances and an independent 

 position. This is nowhere so well illustrated as in the case of cultivated 

 orchids, in which hybridization has played no end of freaks, and in which, 

 also, every individual plant is nursed and coddled. For such plants the 

 struggle for existence is reduced to its lowest terms, for it must be borne in 

 mind that even in the garden plants must fight severely fcr a chance to live, 

 and even then only the very best can persist or are even allowed to try. 



I am aware that this list of hybrids is much more meager than most cat- 

 alogues and trade-lists would have us believe, but I am sure that it is approxi- 

 mately near the truth. It is, of course, equivalent to saying that most of the 

 so-called hybrid fruits and vegetables' are myths. There is everywhere a 

 misconception of what a hybrid is and how it comes to exist ; and yet, per- 

 haps because of this indefinite knowledge, there is a widespread feeling that 

 a hybrid is necessarily good, while the presumption is directly the opposite. 

 The identity of a hybrid in the popular mind rests entirely upon some super- 

 ficial character, and proceeds upon the assumption that it is necessarily in- 

 termediate between the parents. Hence we find one of our popular authors 

 asserting that because the kohlrabi bears its thickened portion midway of 

 its stem, it is evidently a hybrid between the cabbage and turnip, which re- 

 spectively bear the thickened parts at the opposite extremities of the stem ! 

 And then there are those who confound the word hybrid with high-bred, and 

 who build attractive castles upon the unconscious error. And thus is con- 

 fusion confounded ! 



But before leaving the subject of hybridization, I must speak of the old 

 yet common notion that there is some peculiar influence exerted by each sex 



