Chap. X. CHEREIES — APPLES. 3G9 



contained a seed. 79 Mr. Thompson 80 has classified the varieties in 

 an apparently natural method in two main groups by characters 

 taken from the flowers, fruit, and leaves; but some varieties which 

 stand widely separate in this classification are quite fertile when 

 crossed • thus Knight's Early Black cherries is the product of a cross 

 between two such kinds. 



Mr. Knight states that seedling cherries are more variable than 

 those of any other fruit-tree. 81 In the Catalogue of the Horticultural 

 Society for 1812, eighty varieties are enumerated. Some varieties 

 present singular characters : thus, the flower of the Cluster cherry 

 includes as many as twelve pistils, of which the majority abort ; and 

 they are said generally to produce from two to five or six cherries 

 aggregated together and borne on a single peduncle. In the Ratafia 

 cherry several flower-peduncles arise from a common peduncle, 

 upwards of an inch in length. The fruit of Gascoigne's Heart has 

 its apex produced into a globule or drop ; that of the white Hunga- 

 rian Gean has almost transparent flesh. The Flemish cherry is " a 

 very odd-looking fruit," much flattened at the summit and base, 

 with the latter deeply furrowed, and borne on a stout, very short 

 footstalk. In the Kentish cherry the stone adheres so firmly to the 

 footstalk, that it could be drawn out of the flesh; and this renders 

 the fruit well fitted for drying. The Tobacco-leaved cherry, accord- 

 ing to Sageret and Thompson, produces gigantic leaves, more than 

 a foot and sometimes even eighteen inches in length, and half a foot 

 in breadth. The weeping cherry, on the other hand, is valuable 

 only as an ornament, and, according to Downing, is " a charming 

 little tree, with slender, weeping branches, clothed with small, almost 

 myrtle-like foliage." There is also a peach-leaved variety. 



Sageret describes a remarkable variety, h griottier de la Toussaint, 

 which bears at the same time, even as late as September, flowers and 

 fruit of all degrees of maturity. The fruit, which is of inferior 

 quality, is borne on long, very thin footstalks. But the extraordinary 

 statement is made that all the leaf-bearing shoots spring from old 

 flower-buds. Lastly, there is an important physiological distinction 

 between those kinds of cherries which bear fruit on young or on old 

 wood ; but Sageret positively asserts that a Bigarreau in his garden 

 bore fruit on wood of both ages. 82 



Apple (Pyrus malus). — The one source of doubt felt by botanists 

 with respect to the parentage of the apple is whether, besides P. 

 malus, two or three other closely allied wild forms, namely, P. acerba, 

 and precox or paradisiaca, do not deserve to be ranked as distinct 



70 'Transact. Hort. Soc.,' vol. v., Thompson, in ' Hort. Transact.,' see 



1824, p. 295. above; Sageret's ' Pomologie Phys.,* 



*° Ibid., second series, vol. i., 1835, 1830, pp. 358, 364, 367, 379 ; ' Cata- 



p. 248. logue of the Fruit in the Garden 



* l Ibid., vol. ii. p. 138. of Hort. Soc.,' 1842, pp. 57, 60; 



82 These several statements are Downing, 'The Fruits of America, 



taken from the four following works, 1845, pp. I.b9, 195, 200. 

 which may, I believe, be trusted : 



17 



