22 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
Is the Fruit Changed by Foreign Pollen ? 
BY PROF. ASA GRAY. 
At this season, when apples of different variety 
from the tree that bore them, or of two sorts on 
different sides of the same apple, are brought in, it 
is natural that the discussion of the cause and ori¬ 
gin of such freaks should revive, and run the custo¬ 
mary rounds of the papers. You ask whether there 
is any new evidence that pollen may act immedi¬ 
ately on the fruit of the fertilized flower so as to 
impart to it, as well as to the resulting embryo, its 
own specific character. In reply, I would say that 
the only recent contribution I know of that really 
throws'any more light upon this curious subject, is 
an experiment by Maximowicz, a Russian botanist. 
He crossed two Lilies, which differ more in the form 
of their pods than in anything else, (the common 
bulbiferous Lily and Lilium Davuricum), and the 
wavy pod of the one developed directly into a pod 
of the shape of the other. This change of shape, 
so caused, seems to me even more extraordinary 
than the change of quality or texture, such as takes 
place in squashes and melons. I should think that 
the fact of such action of pollen, wholly improbable, 
as it seemed to be, particularly to scientific men, is 
now pretty well established. But what rather sur¬ 
prised me, on looking up the subject, was, that all 
this had been made out very long ago. This ought 
not to excite surpise, for our ancestors were quite 
as sharp-sighted as we are, and if this kind of thing 
occurs now-a-days, it must have occurred 
in former days as well. It is said that 
Theophrastus and Pliny allude to it, but 
I cannot look up that matter now. In the 
case of apples, good old Peter Collinson, 
the correspondent of Franklin and John 
Bartram and Linnaeus, brought some to 
the notice of the Royal Society in 1745, 
and there is a communication in the Philo¬ 
sophical Transactions of that year “con¬ 
cerning the effect which the farina of the 
blossoms of the different sorts of apple 
trees had on the fruit of a neighboring- 
tree.” Mr. Cook, the author of the com¬ 
munication, “sent to Mr. Peter Collin¬ 
son some Russctings, changed by the farina of 
a next neighbor, whose name he wanted skill to 
know, but could only say, that the Russeting had 
acquired his face and complexion. Mr. Collinson 
then produced several samples of the apples, an 
untainted Russeting, a Russeting changed in com¬ 
plexion which grew among a great cluster of unal¬ 
tered brethren, and some apples of the other tree 
which had caused the change in the Russetings, 
and whose fruit had in return received a rough coat 
from the Russetings.” 
It is curious to notice that, when this subject 
came up in England fifty years ago, illustrated by 
new cases, both in fruits and the coats of seeds, 
(such as pears), Mr. Knight, the prince of vegeta¬ 
ble physiologists of his day, took against the idea 
that the pollen had anything to do with it. As the 
upshot of his own observations in making “ some 
thousand” experiments with pollen, in which he 
found no such changes, he conclude^: “ I there¬ 
fore conceive myself fully qualified to decide that 
in the deviations of the fruits mentioned from their 
ordinary character, the operation of the pollen of 
another variety was not the disturbing cause.” 
Soon after he took the same ground in respect to 
the coat of seeds. Nevertheless sufficient positive 
testimony has in both eases overborne the negative, 
but there is no indication that Knight was ever 
convinced by it. At the start he was prepossessed 
by another theory. He had already published an 
account of a branch of a yellow Magnum Bonum 
Plum that bore red fruit; but, though it did this 
only for a single season, bearing yellow plums the 
next year, Knight still clung to the view he was com¬ 
mitted to, i. e. that it was a case of “ bud variation.” 
There is something curious in the case of these 
apples of two sorts. In a strongly marked case 
which I examined, a Spitzenberg apple was russet 
on one side. The flower, of course, had five stig¬ 
mas. If two or three of these were acted upon by 
foreign pollen, and the others by their own pollen, 
the strongly-marked difference of coloration should 
have divided the apple unequally, one would think. 
But exactly one-half was red and unchanged Spitz¬ 
enberg, and the other Russet. I believe this is 
often the case. 
It has lately been attempted to explain such ap¬ 
ples on the principle of reversion. This has been 
suggested as a more probable cause than the action 
of pollen. But that assumes that the Russet has 
Spitzenberg blood in it, or vice-versa, which is 
gratuitous and most unlikely. The other explana¬ 
tion assumes nothing except what is known to 
take place in strictly parallel cases. 
Subsoiling in Market Gardens. 
BY PETER HENDERSON. 
In all our grounds devoted to market gardening, 
I made it an unvarying rule every alternate year, to 
let the subsoil plow follow in the wake of the sur¬ 
face plow, thus stirring up the soil on an average 
18 inches deep. Common as is the use of the 
subsoil plow, yet, no doubt, thousands of your 
readers have never seen one in use, and may have 
vague notions of its manner of working, many 
supposing that it turns up or turns over the sub¬ 
soil. By looking at the implement, it will be seen 
that it is simply a shoe fitted to a strong shaft about 
16 inches in length, this is entered in the furrow- 
made by the common plow, as deep as possible, 
usually down to the beam. In stiff soils, the 
subsoil is often clay, and it requires a pair of 
heavy oxen or horses for the work, if the subsoil 
is strong, oxen are preferable to horses. The 
longer our practice in working the soil, the more 
important do we find this much neglected opera¬ 
tion of subsoiling. Often large sums are spent 
in laying drains that in a few years become inopera¬ 
tive for want of subsoiling. All my grounds here 
are overlaying a blue clay subsoil, and are drained 
with tiles, 20 feet apart, and from 3 to 4 feet deep. 
Yet without the use of the subsoil plow, to stir 
this compact subsoil of clay, so as to allow the 
water to pass through it freely, the drains would 
not have half their value. We took advantage Of 
the past fine dry fall, and gave all our vacant 
grounds a thorough plowing, following with the 
subsoiler, so that they were stirred to at least 20 
inches deep. A few days after finishing, we had 
twelve hours of continuous rain, which was quick¬ 
ly absorbed by the deeply stirred soil, and taken 
off by the drains ; hut on looking at a part of one 
field, I observed that nearly a third of it was 
covered with pools of water in the tracks left by 
horses’ feet, and on searching for the cause, found 
out that something about the subsoil plow had 
broken, and the work was finished up by the com¬ 
mon plow only—stirring 8 inches deep, instead of 
20. In consequence the water lodged on the com¬ 
pacted upper stratum of the subsoil, where it 
would take days to find its way down to the drains. 
The great trouble with most farmers and gardeners, 
is that the use of the subsoil plow necessitates an 
extra team, a convenience that it is often impossi¬ 
ble to hire, and in consequence many who are well 
aware of its importance, have to do without using 
it. Ritt_where neighbors are near, it would be a 
mutual advantage to exchange the use of teams, 
rather than to do without the benefits of the sub¬ 
soiler. Where furrows are long, the same team 
may work both the surface and sqb.spil plows, by 
SUBSOIL PLOW. 
losing a minute or two to unhitch and hitch. I 
am so convinced of the value of this deep 
stirring of the soil, that I believe if in all heavy, 
deep lands, the use of the subsoil plow could be 
made universal, stirring down to the depth of 18 or 
20 inches, twenty per cent would be added to the 
value of the crop throughout the entire cultivated 
area. If on drained land, the use of the subsoil 
plow is advantageous, it is even more so on land 
that is not drained, the point in either case, being 
to break or stir the compacted subsoil as deeply 
as possible, so that water will pass off rapidly, 
and at the same time make a medium in which 
the roots of plants will strike deep, thus sus¬ 
taining the crops in dry weather, which would be 
destroyed or injured by shallow plowing. 
Some Sew Uses of Old Tools. 
BY J. E. ROOT, ROCKFORD,. ILL. 
I have tested new patented implements for til¬ 
ling the soil, as they have been introduced, and I 
have found many of them valuable, yet I have been 
most pleased with some nevj uses for the old ones, 
and some home-made ones, which must certainly 
commend themselves, as they involve little or no 
expense, and can be tried on a small scale, until 
their utility is established. 
The Harrow, 
besides being an excellent tool for fining the soil, 
and fitting it for the crop, is equally good for tilling 
it. With no other implement can we so cheaply 
and quickly kill the Weeds, if we only begin in 
time. Long before we heard of the Thomas Smooth¬ 
ing Harrow, (which is indeed an excellent imple¬ 
ment,) I could from my own fields see at least a 
dozen farmers at once, off on the rolling prairies, 
working their corn with the common square harrow, 
drawn diagonally. In planting large breadths, the 
weed seeds in that first planted are sprouted by the 
time the last is finished, so that our usual method 
has been to plant the seed at least two inches deep, 
and as soon as the teams are through planting, to 
hitch them to the harrows, and begin working the 
first portions, hills and all, and continue this, until 
the rows can be easily followed. The many teeth 
of the harrow destroy the newly germinated weed- 
plants as thoroughly in the hill as in the row, while 
the deeply rooted corn-sprout, from its spindle 
shape, slips to one side or the other of the teeth, 
and is not only not injured, but is greatly benefited 
by the breaking of the crust, and the loosening and 
aerating of the soil. In this way the crop is kept 
clean, until it is so large that the cultivator can 
with safety throw soil into the hill, and keep the 
crop free from weeds, until it is laid aside. In 
“the plankek,” 
fact, the harrow is quite as important to the corn 
crop, as is the cultivator, and the secret of large 
crops yearly on the same land in the West, lies 
quite as much in the early and constant tillage 
with one or the other of these implements, as in 
fertility of the soil. In like manner the harrow is 
put upon the potato crop soon after planting, and 
again just as it is coming up, so that the crop is 
