Vol. LXXII. No. 4195. 
NEW YORK, MARCH 22, 1913 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
“THE DRONE TREE.” 
Improvement Through Bud Selection. 
Part I. 
The two Washington Navel orange 
trees shown on this page stand in a 
California orchard. They show the vast 
difference between individual trees on 
the oi dinary commercial fruit farm. The 
upper picture shows a drone tree. It 
is of dwarf size, nearly fruitless, and 
the fruit itself is practically worthless; 
yet it is true that some orchards, sup¬ 
posed to be for commercial purposes, 
have as high as 50 per cent trees of this 
type. Below is a standard orange tree 
of the same variety, which hears many 
fruit on the inside of the tree. There 
seems to be no doubt that a large pro¬ 
portion of fruit trees in any commercial 
orchard prove to be drones when accu¬ 
rately tested and compared. The time 
seems to have now come when one of 
the most important things for the fruit 
growers to do is to test his trees, ap¬ 
plying what we call a modified “Babcock 
test” to separate the drones from the 
workers. Not only do the Citrus trees 
in California vary remarkably in their 
capacity to bear fruit, but they show 
a difference in the quality of the fruit 
as well. Roughly speaking, 90 per cent 
of the fruit from the productive type 
of trees prove to be first grade, while 
the drones gave nearly 90 per cent of 
fruit which ranked as second grade or 
culls. Last June at Santa Barbara, 
California, Prof. A. D. Shamel gave a 
remarkable address, the basis for the 
following series of articles. To show 
what is coming in the way of tree test¬ 
ing, we first state a record worked out 
in this way in a Florida grove. The 
owner of this grove stated some years 
ago, as many other growers do, that in 
his judgment all of the trees in Florida 
bore all the fruit they could hold, yet 
as the result of a thorough three-years’ 
test of each tree in large groves, 48 per 
cent of the trees were replaced this 
Spring, and only 14 per cent of the trees 
were found to be profitable producers. 
There were 3,726 trees in five groves 
examined. Each tree was tested, the 
fruit being accurately picked separately, 
weighed and graded. As a result it was 
found that 1,670 trees together produced 
in three years 2,204 boxes of fruit. 
In another class 1,460 trees produced 
6,245 boxes, or an average of 4% boxes 
per tree. In another class 596 trees or 
14 per cent, of all produced 6,017 boxes, 
or an average of 10 boxes to the tree, 
tn other words, it was found upon ac¬ 
curate test that the difference between 
the product of a drone tree and a pro¬ 
ductive tree was greater than that be¬ 
tween the milk or butter from a robber 
cow and that from a prize cow. In both 
cases the owner of the orchard, or the 
owner of the herd, did not and could 
not realize that there was any such in¬ 
dividual difference until a thorough test 
A DRONE TREE OF WASHINGTON NAVEL ORANGE. Fig. 131. 
STANDARD TYPE OF WASHINGTON NAVEL ORANGE. Fig. 132 
was made. Mr. Shamel’s work in Cal- 
fornia is along the line of finding out 
two things. Do these differences between 
drone and productive trees hold good 
in most orchards, and if so, is it pos¬ 
sible to breed up a larger proportion of 
productive trees by using buds only 
from trees of high test? This is a 
great proposition, and certainly one of 
the most important that has yet been 
brought to fruit growers. 
Mr. Shamel says that thinking farm¬ 
ers now recognize the importance of 
plant breeding. Thousands of trained 
workers are working to improve such 
crops as wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco 
or potatoes, by breeding or seed selec¬ 
tion. No one who stops to think for a 
moment now questions the importance 
and value of such work. For exam¬ 
ple, at Cornell University, Dr. H. J. 
Webber has done remarkable work in 
selecting individual Timothy plants, and 
using the seed from them to develop a 
higher grade of grass. Again, in the 
Connecticut Valley work has been done 
in selecting a particular type of cigar 
wrapper tobacco. This work so care¬ 
fully carried out by Mr. Shamel was 
the foundation for establishing one of 
the most profitable agricultural indus¬ 
tries in the country. This industry had 
been largely abandoned on account of 
the losses due to worthless types of to¬ 
bacco. which were not suited to cigar 
wrappers. The value of this work is 
admitted. Can the same principle be 
carried out in improving our orchard 
fruits? All will agree with a little 
thought that each variety of fruit car¬ 
ries weak and undesirable types of 
plants, which tend to injure not only 
the reputation of that variety, but to 
cut down its profit. The presence of 
these undesirable types is without ques¬ 
tion a frequent cause of loss and waste 
upon the farm, just the same as the un¬ 
profitable cows in a dairy have undoubt¬ 
edly discouraged many a farmer, nailed 
the mortgage tightly to the farm and 
clinched the nails. 
Mr. Shamel calls it an astonishing 
fact, in view of what has been done with 
other crops, that the possibilities of im¬ 
proving fruits by budding have not 
been worked out. He quotes Mr. E. A. 
Chase, a California nurseryman, in giv¬ 
ing a partial explanation for this state 
of affairs. Mr. Chase has had long ex¬ 
perience in the nursery business, and is 
also a fruit grower, and he says: 
'Nurserymen as a rule have been engaged 
exclusively in propagating trees. They 
have known hut little or nothing of the 
varieties and types of fruit, very few have 
any experimental grounds. lienee they are 
not familiar with the various types. They 
largely propagate or secure their scions or 
buds from young trees in the nursery. 
Some have practiced renewing their stocks 
from bearing trees, but they know nothing 
nor have any means of knowing, whether 
the bearing trees from which they secure 
buds or scions are of the best types, or whether 
they a re the best producers or not. There has 
been little or no thought up to a very recent 
