47 
the almond family) they have been constantly productive, but when 
planted with the varieties isolated they have proven barren, except in 
the South. 
While the Wild Goose will pollenize its own stigmas south of the Ohio 
River, and will not north, may seem a.little strange. But this fact is 
easily explained. Here, or North, fruit trees burst suddenly into bloom, 
and in three or four days the sexual organs of the flowers have matured, 
performed their functions, and lost their sexual force. South, the peach 
is often in continuous bloom for four months, the plum for two months, 
and therefore there is a continuous supply of ripe pollen and ripe (stig- 
matic) stigmas to receive it. Here the Wild Goose plum, for instance, 
opens its flowers one day, ripens and sheds most of its pollen the fore- 
noon of the next day (the pollen of the plum, whichis the male element 
of their sexuality, consists of very minute roundish, egg-like cells, very 
light and produced in great abundance, and may be carried by the wind 
for miles under favorable circumstances and their potency remain un- 
impaired), and not until the afternoon of this day do the stigmas take 
on the sexual heat and become ready to receive it. These and the other 
fully established facts, that to many varieties and species of plants their 
own pollen is neither acceptable nor fertile to their own flowers—stig- 
mas—and to the more common fact that in many piants a flower is 
not fertile with pollen of that flower, but fully fertile with pollen from 
another; why we have failed to get fruit from many varieties of Na- 
tive Plums when not growing near other Plum trees (or other trees of 
the Almond family), and why these same varieties are very productive 
when planted near others; the reason for this seems to be that nat- 
ure abhors “in and in breeding,” or, in other words, she has carefully 
guarded nearly all forms of life from unnatural unions or a too close 
consanguinity of offspring. 
But in our Almond family the different species seem freely to fertil- 
ize each other sexually in many instances, and the resulting hybrids. 
are, so far as observed, fully fertile with all. For, as before intimated, I 
have absolute and incontestable proof that the flowers of the Wild Goose 
and Miner plums are fertilized to a limited extent by the pollen of our 
cherries, which belong to a different genus of the same order. Also, 
the proof is absolute that the pollen of the peach freely fertilizes the 
flowers of the Chickasaw plums, at least some of them. The new early 
peaches, such as Hale’s Early, Amsden’s June, Alexander, Wc., are 
such hybrids nearest the peach in their generalities; and the Black- 
man, Golden Beauty, and other so-called plums are such hybrids more: 
nearly resembling the plums. 
The plums of Europe freely fertilize our native plums, and vice versa. 
So far there is no proof that the sub genus, Padus, to which our wild 
cherries belong, is sexually fertile with other members of the sub order, 
but it is very probable that it is not. 
We have now, if we have read understandingly, learned how we may 
