New York AgoricutturaL Exprrment Station. 637 
another variety that blossomed at the same time, than they were 
when standing alone. In 1891 I planned to investigate this sub- 
ject the following season, and the investigations then begun have 
been continued every season sincethat time. As primarily planned 
the object of the investigations was to determine, if possible : 
1. Whether the pistil of the grape flower is pollinated before 
the blossoms open. 
2. Whether any varieties are incapable of setting fruit when 
supplied only with their own pollen. 
Observations‘ on seventy-seven kinds of grapes, including eight 
species and their hybrids and crosses,showed that, in every instance, 
self-pollination occurred, so that with these varieties, at least, 
failure to set fruit could not be attributed to lack of pollination. 
Twenty-one of these seventy-seven kinds of grapes can not fruit 
when supplied with none but their own pollen, while they are 
able to set fruit when planted near other varieties that blossom 
with them. With these varieties failure to fruit must result 
when set by themselves out of the reach of pollen from other vines. 
The second question, namely, whether any varieties are inca- 
pable of setting fruit when supplied with none but their own 
pollen, is evidently one to be fully decided only by experiment. 
Investigations concerning this subject- were made by covering 
_the blossom clusters with paper bags before the blossoms opened. 
\ 
The bag was slipped over the cluster and the mouth was then 
drawn together and fastened with a wired label. After the 
blossoming season had passed, the paper bags in some instances 
were replaced with bags made of cheese cloth or mosquito net- 
ting. In other cases the paper bags were allowed to remain till 
the fruit was gathered. The object of this use of the paper bags 
was to exclude all ouside pollen from the covered clusters, so 
that whatever fruit set within the bags would be the result of 
close fertilization ; that is to say, the pollen necessary to fertiliza- 
tion of the flower would be produced either by the flower itself 
or by some other flower in the same cluster. 
Treated in this manner some varieties were able to fruit per- 
fectly ; other varieties failed to develop any fruit whatever, and 
between these two extremes there was every gradation. Fig. 3 
from a photograph of Black Eagle covered to exclude pollen of 
_ 7 Beach,S. A. The Self Pollination of the Grape. Garden and Forest (1892), pp. 451, 452; 
also, Annual Report of N. Y. State Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y., for 1892, pp. 597- 606, 
