t\ SMALL FRUITS AND HOW HE GROWS THEM 
Senator Dunlap. 
have a mother but no father. They receive 
only the impression of the "mother" plant and 
therefore their fruit more closely resembles it; 
in other words, each runner or cutting is the 
diN-ided protoplasm of the mother plant and there- 
fore possesses all the weakness or good qualities of 
the parent plant. If the parent plant is weak the 
runner will be weak. If strong and vigorous that 
quality goes with the bud. 
Do these asexual plants or buds and 
runners never vary?— Yes. Under changed 
conditions and when stimulated by high tillage 
they make very marked variations. Sometimes 
so much as to be regarded as entirely new and 
distinct varieties. 
V Florists who propagate largely through cuttings 
pay the greatest attention to bud variations by 
selecting those which make desirable changes to 
propagate from and in this way have produced 
maguificent specimens of double flowers and have 
greatly increased the blooming habit of plants and 
thus originated a large number of new varieties. 
The magnificent double roses and variegated 
foliage plants are produced by this method. There 
is a long list of bud varieties in fruit produced in 
this way which are called sports. 
Will these bud sports transmit their 
peculiarities to new plants grown from 
them? — Yes. There is no doubt about this. 
When you find a good variation even a single limb 
on a tree or strawberry runner you can retain it by 
propagating from it and if you find a still better 
variation in these new plants you can further 
improve the variety by propagating from them. 
As an illustration we may cite the orange 
orchards of Florida. Orange trees were formerly 
very thorny but Nurserymen began taking scions 
from limbs which had fewer tliorns until now the 
trees are all thornless. If selections had been 
made from limbs having the most thorns, the trees 
would still have been covered with them. 
Is this the way you breed up your plants? 
— Yes. While the varieties retain their old names 
they are practically new .sorts because they are so 
greatly improved in general fruiting vigor. 
Why is it that in a bed of common plants 
we occasionally see one growing extra fine 
berries while a great majority of plants 
produce only a few small berries?— Because 
the plants not being selected each year soon differ 
greatly in vital or seminal vigor. Some are more 
exhausted or devitalized than others. Occasionally 
a plant has partially recovered and bears a few 
large berries, but as a rule fruit growers and 
nurserymen pay no attention to the condition of 
their plants in regard to fruiting vigor, but propa- 
gate from anything and everything -and so under 
high tillage one plant makes runners and another 
fruit so that the yield on the average is only 75 to 
100 bushels of inferior fruit to the acre while if 
each plant were fruiting to its full capacity there 
would be several times as many quarts of a very 
much higher quality which would command the 
highest price and always have a ready sale, and 
this difference represents the real value of thorough- 
bred plants as compared with common plants. 
Why is it that fruit growers in general 
have not improved their plants in this way? 
— Because they did not understand that plants 
could be improved. It was a mystery to tliem why 
their plants when well cultivated and manured 
made so many runners but produced so little fruit. 
We might as well ask why the telephone was not 
in general use forty years ago. The principle of 
transmitting sound by electricity had not then 
been discovered. 
What would be the eflfect of continuously 
selecting through a series of years the 
poorest plants you could find for propaga- 
gation? — The varieties would all run out and that 
IS what a great majority of fruit growers are doing 
as already stated. They take the tip plants by the 
side of the matted row which are the last to form 
in the fall and have immature fruit buds and green 
succulent roots which cause them to lose their 
ability to form fruit. 
The Sample. 
PHYSICAI, CUI^TURB. 
It is a rule of nature that any faculty or muscle 
which is never used will become atrophied or use- 
less and that all development whether mental or 
