546 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



berries that resulted from self-pollination 

 were smaller and later in maturing than 

 cross - pollinated berries on the same 

 bush. On some bushes not a berry ma- 

 tured from many self-pollinations. The 

 same relation exists between the flowers 

 of two plants grown from cuttings of the 

 same bush. These plants behave like dif- 

 ferent parts of one plant and set little or 

 no fruit from each other's pollen. 



From these experiments it became clear 

 that if a blueberry grower should set out 

 a whole field with plants from cuttings 

 of a single choice bush his plantation 

 would be practically fruitless, because it 

 would contain no other blueberry stock 

 from which the bees in their search for 

 nectar could bring the unrelated pollen 

 required to enable his choice plants to set 

 fruit. The best procedure is to make up 

 the plantation with alternating rows of 

 plants propagated by cuttings from two 



choice varieties. Each will then set fruit 

 in abundance through pollination by the 

 other (see page 544). 



The introduction of the blueberry into 

 agriculture has a much more profound 

 significance than the mere addition of 

 one more agricultural industry to those 

 already in existence. Blueberries thrive 

 best in soils so acid as to be considered 

 worthless for ordinary agricultural pur- 

 poses. Their culture, therefore, not only 

 promises to add to the general welfare 

 through the utilization of land almost 

 valueless otherwise, but it offers a profit- 

 able industry to individual landowners in 

 districts in which general agricultural 

 conditions are especially hard and un- 

 promising, and it suggests the possibility 

 of the further utilization of such lands by 

 means of other crops adapted to acid con- 

 ditions. 



AMERICA'S SURPASSING FISHERIES 



Their Present Condition and Future Prospects, and How 

 the Federal Government Fosters Them 



By Hugh M. Smith 

 United States Commissioner of Fisheries 



THE early history of France, Spain, 

 Portugal, and England in the New 

 World is to a very considerable 

 extent centered in the fisheries. The 

 tales of fabulous quantities of cod, her- 

 ring, etc., brought back by the European 

 navigators to the western shores of the 

 Atlantic were the principal single induce- 

 ment or incitement to further voyages of 

 adventure and discovery ; and the veri- 

 fication of these tales was a potent factor 

 in subsequent colonization. 



A cod fishery about Newfoundland 

 was conducted by Normans and Bretons 

 as early as 1504, and there is a tradition 

 among the fishermen of the Bay of Bis- 

 cay that one of their number who had 

 been fishing in the western Atlantic in- 

 formed Columbus of the existence of 



land in that region before the illustrious 

 explorer had begun his memorable voy- 

 ages. 



A very able American writer on the 

 early fisheries of the country makes a 

 plausible case in favor of his contention 

 that the Pilgrims could not have escaped 

 the fishing mania which affected all other 

 people of maritime Europe at the time, 

 and that these weary exiles in Holland, 

 noting the riches acquired by the Dutch 

 from their fisheries, could not have been 

 unmoved by the accounts of the vast 

 shoals of fish to be found on the shores 

 of the New World. 



The settlement of -Massachusetts col- 

 ony was due directly to the fisheries, and 

 the original proprietors of New Hamp- 

 shire went there for the sole purpose of 



