Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/94

 mend the method I have adopted. I had chosen fruits possessing excellencies and defects of opposite kinds, with a wish to see either through the industry of the bees, or my own, the effects of a process similar to what is called, by breeders of animals, crossing the breed. This consists in propagating from males and females not related to each other, and is certainly necessary, in those animals at least, in which strength and spirit constitute excellencies, to prevent their degenerating. The experiment was easily made, and the singular effects I had seen produced by similar means on other plants, left me no reason to doubt that some effect would he produced in this. The good and the ill effects, which follow the process of crossing the breed of plants, are perfectly similar to those which have been observed among animals. If the male and female be taken from two permanent varieties of different characters, the immediate offspring will present a mixture of both characters in nearly an equal proportion, but the progeny of this offspring will be extremely various. Some will take nearly the form of their male, and others of their female ancestry, and it will be long before a new permanent character is acquired. In perennial vegetables, the progress of variation and de-