New Yorx AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 341 
nor other groups within the species. People in countries but 
little advanced in horticulture still give attention to the species 
and wholly or largely ignore the variety. But as cultivation of 
plants has advanced and as we have come to know them better, 
groups within the species have come to be recognized. Smaller 
groups are now designated by names. While at present the variety 
is the commonest subdivision of the species yet as our ideas become 
more refined we shall make more use of still other divisions, as the 
group, higher than the variety, and the straim, lower. 
But the chief point to be brought out in this discussion is that 
groups of varieties have adaptations to particular conditions. Thus 
there are groups of apples for certain geographical regions; as 
the Winesap, Romanite, and Ben Davis groups for the southern 
apple regions; the Fameuse, Blue Pearmain and Baldwin groups 
for New York; and the crab-hybrid group, represented by the 
Wealthy, and the Russian groups for the North Mississippi Valley. 
This development of groups of varieties for regions having diverse 
conditions is becoming more and more marked, and cognizance of 
it must be taken in preparing lists for the several pomological dis- 
tricts of New York. We shall find it of great advantage to discard 
whole groups of apples from certain districts or even from the 
State itself. It is time, too, to emphasize the importance to the 
fruit-grower and to the nurseryman of considering varieties of our 
fruits in their natural groups whether for propagation, distribution, 
culture, marketing, or whatever purpose. 
Before proceeding to a direct application of this matter of group- 
ing to the subject in hand another phase of it is worth setting forth. 
Varieties which belong to the largest and best differentiated groups 
have their characters most strongly fixed and are prepotent in 
transmitting them to their offspring. Thus seedlings of the Ben 
Davis, Fameuse, or Russian groups come nearly true from seed; 
the varieties of these, and of all cosmopolitan groups, are adapted 
to many diverse conditions; the plant-breeder finds them more 
plastic subjects for his work; and, withal, the size of the group, 
the number of varieties in it, is an indication of merit in a number 
of minor respects but in particular that it indicates potency and 
power of adaptation. Similarly we shall find upon close analysis 
