1885 .] Acclimatisation from another Side. 739 
That is, all those which yield an inferior flower or fruit 
are pulled and thrown on to the rubbish heap, the 
superior varieties only being preserved. Perhaps one in 
a hundred is thus permitted to survive and is used for 
propagation. 
But the same horticultural authorities do not seem suffi- 
ciently alive to the fa< 5 t that among a large number of seed- 
lings some may be superior to the generality in their power 
of resisting low temperatures. We learn from Mr. Jenner 
Weir, F.E.S., a most observant naturalist, that a great 
number of begonias, which the grower had intended to house 
for the winter, were overtaken by one of the morning frosts 
which have occurred so unseasonably in the present autumn. 
All the begonias, save one, were cut off. It becomes now 
exceedingly probable that if young plants were propagated 
from this resistant individual some one or more of them 
would be found still hardier than the parent, and thus, by a 
process of selection, we might, in the course of successive 
generations, arrive at a strain of begonias, and in like 
manner of other greenhouse plants, which should flourish in 
the open ground. # 
By a similar process of selection we might seek to pio- 
duce fruit trees, which should come into blossom latei than 
the ordinary strains, and thus escape the destiuCtive aCtion 
of spring-frosts. It would, of course, be needful to aim at 
the production of strains which mature their fruits in the 
shortest time. Of course the essential question, only to.be 
determined by experience, is whether the power of beaiing 
low temperatures, of blossoming late and yet lipening 
fruit early, can be obtained without a sacrifice, gieatei or 
less, of the valuable properties of the various fruits. Butin 
so untrustworthy a climate as ours, where a tempeiatuie of 
24° F. may be experienced as late as May 8th, the develop- 
ment of such strains or varieties should be aimed at if oui 
soil is to yield its cultivators due remuneration. 
