R. M. Eellog'? searching- for the ideal plant and bud 
variations with a view of improving 
tlie variety. 
The Professor at the Agricultural College teaching a class 
how to select animals to improve 
the breed. 
Like begets like whether in breeding plants or animals. 
A scrub never begat a thoroughbred plant or animal 
Selection and restriction Is the basis of all improvement. 
The pedigree of a plant is the history of its breeding and 
determines its value for bearing fruit. 
I 
MONEY IN SMALL FRUITS. 
Few g:rowers of small fruits who follow the 
usual methods have any conception of the possibili- 
ties of the strawberry plant when built up in 
fruiting stamina by selection and restriction and 
made to throw its energies into the development 
of fruit instead of useless runners. 
The life grerm in the plant is identical with 
that in the animal. Plants are male and female 
and have perfect sexual organs with everv named 
part found in the animal. Fecundation takes place 
between plants and they have the same intense 
passion for breeding and if not restrained bear 
themselves into impolencv or inahilitv to fruit. 
The seeds are llie eggs of the plant and the 
fruit or flesli grows only 
as a receptacle for the 
seeds to develop in, and 
wherever there are no 
seeds there will be no 
fruit, and the size, color 
and flavor of the berry as 
well as the general stami- 
na of the plant will be 
governed by the vigor of 
the sexual organs. 
Pollen exhaustion is 
the chief cause of unfruit- 
fulness in plants, and in 
an aniinal would be called 
seminal weakness. The 
offspring of an animal 
seniinally weak is always 
scrubby and in every way 
inferior, and plants are 
by excessive fruiting or seed 
be ma le to produce fine, larger 
■ . of tillage. When a plant 
1 we sav "it has run out." 
PRE- 
. B. M0R8K c 
ST. JOSEl - 
You can increase the foliage of an impotent 
plant and make it throw out a great mass of run- 
ners by liberal applications of manure and high 
cultivation but that will not materially increase the 
amount of fruit. 
A Strawberry plant which is sexuallv vigorous 
will throw its energies into multiplying 'its species 
by seeds and consequent fruit flesh 'and will impart 
to it every good quality but will make compara- 
tively few runners, and is belter able to withstand 
uiif-ivorahlt- cliii'atio conditions. 
Strawberry plants, weak in seed production, 
generally Idoom full but many of them fail to set 
fruit and the berries are full of hard knots and 
much deformed. While the foliage of such plants 
may be rank the fruit rarely attains the full size of 
the variety and is always deficient in quality. 
There are manv degrees of this impotencv. If 
the plant is partly affected it will onlv develop its 
fruit to a medium size and occasionally one berry 
will take the entire strength of the plant and grow 
to full size, but those more striously affected will 
be entirely barren and the fruit of the whole field 
will be very uneven and a large part of the berries 
are lost as they are too small to market. This is 
the condition of the plants on, the grounds of a 
large majo'-itv of the fruit growers of the country 
Not one in a thousand has paid any attention 
to the jiedigree of the plants he cultivates, or 
understands why his plants do not produce fine 
fruit after giving them so much manuring and 
careful cultivation. He gets plenty of leaves and 
runners but only a little fruit and that of poor 
quality. 
The remedy is to start your spring .setting with 
plants free from this weakness and then propagate 
them as explained in the article on " The Propa- 
gating Bed " It does not follow that the seeds 
must be large to secure the highest development in 
fruit ; on the contrary they are much smaller in 
fruit grown on the thoroughbred plants because 
