Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/269

Rh The fact that crossing was only the first step and that selection from the numerous variations secured in the second and a few succeeding generations was the real work of new plant creation had never been appreciated; and to-day its significance is not fully understood either by breeders or even by many scientific investigators along these very lines. Old tailings are constantly being worked over at great expense of time and with small profit, while the mother lode is repudiated and neglected.

Plant breeding to be successful must be conducted like architecture. Definite plans must be carefully laid for the proposed creation; suitable materials selected with judgment, and these must be securely placed in their proper order and position. No occupation requires more accuracy, foresight and skill than does scientific plant or animal breeding.

As before noted, the first generation after a cross has been made is usually a more or less complete blend of all the characteristics of both parents; not only the visible characters, but an infinite number of invisible ones are inherent and will shape the future character and destiny of the descendants, often producing otherwise unaccountable so-called mutations, saltations or sports, the selection and perpetuation of which give to new plant creations their unique forms and often priceless values, like the Burbank potato produced thirty-six years ago and which is now grown on this western coast almost to the exclusion of all others (fourteen millions of bushels per annum, besides the vast amount grown in the-eastern United States and other countries), or the Bartlett pear, Baldwin apple and navel oranges, all of which are variations selected by some keen observer. Millions of others are forever buried in oblivion for the lack of such an observer.

But in this paper I wish to call attention to a not unusual result of crossing quite distinct wild species which deserves the most careful analysis, as it seems to promise a new text for scientific investigation, especially on biometric lines. The subject was most forcibly brought to my attention twenty years ago by the singular behavior of the second-generation seedlings of raspberry-blackberry hybrids. By crossing the Siberian raspberry (Rubus cratægifolius) with our native trailing blackberry (Rubus vitifolius), a thoroughly fixed new species was summarily produced. The seedlings of this composite Rubus (named Primus), though a most perfect blend of both parents but resembling neither, never reverted either way; all the seedlings coming much more exactly like the new type than do the seedlings of any ordinary wild rubus. Many thousand plants have been raised generation after generation, all repeating themselves after the new and unique type. No botanist on earth could do otherwise than classify it if found wild as a valid new species, which it truly is, though so summarily produced by crossing.