CROSS-BREEDING. 
& 
universally pursued now by skilful cultivators, in producing 
new and finer varieties of plants ; and which Mr. Knight, the 
most distinguished horticulturist of the age, so successfully prac- 
tised on fruit trees. 
Cross-breeding. 
In the blossoms of fruit-trees, and of most other plants, the 
seed is the offspring of the stamens and pistil , which may be 
considered the male and female parents, growing in the same 
flower. Cross-breeding is, then, nothing more than removing 
out of the blossom of a fruit tree the stamens, or male parents, 
and bringing those of another, and different variety of fruit, and 
dusting the pistil or female parent with them, — a process suffi- 
ciently simple, but which has the most marked effect on the seeds 
produced. It is only within about fifty years that cross-breeding 
lias been practised ; but Lord Bacon, whose great mind seems 
to have had glimpses into every dark corner of human know- 
ledge, finely foreshadowed it. “ The compounding or mixture 
of plants is not found out, which, if it were, is more at command 
than that of living creatures ; wherefore, it were one of the 
most notable discoveries touching plants to find it out, for so you 
may have great varieties of fruits and flowers yet unknown.” 
In figure 1, is shown the blossom of the 
Cherry. The central portion, a, connected 
directly with the young fruit, is the pistil. 
The numerous surrounding threads, 6, are the 
stamens. 'The summit of the stamen is called 
the anther , and secretes the powdery substance 
called pollen. The pistil has at its base the 
*'>&• >• embryo fruit, and at its summit, the stigma :. 
The use of the stamens is to fertilize the young seed contained 
at the base of the pistil ; and if we fertilize the pistil of one variety 
of fruit by the pollen of another, we shall obtain a new variety 
partaking intermediately of the qualities of both parents. Thus, 
among fruits owing their origin directly to cross-breeding, Coe’s 
Golden Drop Plum, was raised from the Green Gage, impreg- 
nated by the Magnum Bonum, or Egg plum ; and the Elton 
cherry, from the Bigarrieu, impregnated by the White Heart.* 
Mr. Knight was of opinion that the habits of the new variety 
would always be found to partake most strongly of the constitu 
tion and habits of the female parent. Subsequent experience 
does not fully confirm this, and it would appear that the parent 
* The seedlings sometimes most resemble one parent sometimes the other ; 
but more frequently share the qualities of both. Mr. Coxe describes an 
Apple, a cross between a Newtown Pippin and a Russet, the fruit cf which 
resembled externally at one end the Russet and at the other the Pippin, 
and the flavour at either end corresponded exactly with the character of the 
exteriour 
