50 SYSTEMATIC POMOLOGY. 



Tank in the scale of plant life. The student must understand 

 that these divisions are arbitrary and are not fixed and have no 

 actual existence in Nature. Bounds are not mad-e by [feature 

 but by man. But the botanists have not subdivided far enough 

 for the horticulturist and pomologist. Genera, species and the 

 botanists varieties are farther sub-divided into purely horticul- 

 tural groups, for the same reasons that the botanist found it 

 necessary to group plants. Horticulture and botany are so inti- 

 mately connected that it is not possible to say that this or that 

 group is a purely horticultural one, but, in a general way, the 

 following are horticultural groups rather than botanical ones, 

 though all are used in botany with slightly different meanings: 



A race is any variety, sub-species, or species, whose characters 

 are continued by seed through successive generations. 



A variety is a group of individuals which differs from the rest 

 of its species in certain recognizable particulars which are trans- 

 mitted from generation to generation and are constant to a high 

 degree. 



A horticultural variety carries with it the quality of cultural- 

 value and the suggestion of being artificially propagated and 

 perpetuated. 



A strain is the least recognizable variation or group. The 

 strain is the starting point for the making of greater differences. 



As yet the strain is not sufficiently well recognized by the 

 horticulturist and especially the pomologist. As competition 

 becomes keener in all branches of horticulture, the strain will 

 become more and more important. 



The Variety. — The unit of classification in botany is the 

 species. Now a system for classifying horticultural plants 

 must be based on a botanical system and in that sense the 



