. Luther Burbank, his methods and discoveries and their practical application; . made the fruit popular,and with the added property of keeping overwinter. Other possibilities of pear development lyinga little farther in the future and therefore some-what more vaguely outlined, have to do with thehybridization of the pear with the allied fruits ofrelated species. It is well-known that the pearshows, in this regard, a strong disinclination forentering into such an alliance. The pear may begrafted on the quince but it is usually consideredimpossible to graft it on the apple. I successfully carrie
. Luther Burbank, his methods and discoveries and their practical application; . made the fruit popular,and with the added property of keeping overwinter. Other possibilities of pear development lyinga little farther in the future and therefore some-what more vaguely outlined, have to do with thehybridization of the pear with the allied fruits ofrelated species. It is well-known that the pearshows, in this regard, a strong disinclination forentering into such an alliance. The pear may begrafted on the quince but it is usually consideredimpossible to graft it on the apple. I successfully carried out such a grafting ex-periment, however, when I was a boy in Massa-chusetts, the cion being a Seckel pear. But al-though this grafted cion bore fruit for two sea-sons, it then died, probably because of the uncon-geniality of the alliance. This experiment shows that there is not com-plete antagonism between the two species; andthe same thing is further demonstrated by thewell-known fact that the apple may be grafted onthe pear stock; although here also the alliance is [136]. Ml iM M a a Irs A A S»A A 0, a 1 r A 3-1 . C A 3|„ sSc- a. a A LUTHER BURBANK not likely to prove fruitful and of course grafting is only an incidentaladjunct of the work of the plant-developer. Theimpulse to progress must come through hybridiza-tion and selection. Here, it appears to me, thereare great possibilities. I have hybridized the pearand the apple; also the pear and the quince. Theseedlings from these unions have sometimesseemed thrifty, but were always infertile. Theywere highly interesting none the less. The most successful cross was obtained by us-ing the pollen of the Bartlett pear upon theGravenstein apple. The seedlings from this cross were divergent inappearance, and variable as to growth. One ofthe seedlings grew fully as fast as the ordinaryapple seedling, but most of them had a sickly,dwarfed appearance, and some died after havingmade a foot of growth. Three or four
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