436 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 183. 



there is now no likelihood of its being discovered. 

 His most intimate friends appear to have been kept 

 in the dark on this subject. With respect to his 

 country, the most probable conclusion seems to be, 

 that he was born in the south of Europe, in a city 

 of Languedoc. A very near approximation seems 

 to be made to the exact locality by a careful col- 

 lation of the circumstances mentioned in his auto- 

 biography, in the excellent summary of his life in 

 the GentlemarCs Magazine, vols, xxxiv. and xxxv., 

 which is much better worth consulting than the 

 articles in Aikin or Chalmers ; which are poor and 

 superficial, and neither of which gives any list of 

 his works, or notices the Essay on Miracles, by a 

 Layman (London, 1753, 8vo.), which is one of 

 them, though published anonymously. There is a 

 very amusing account of conversations with him at 

 Oxford, in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxv. 

 p. 78., in which, before a large company of ladies 

 and gentlemen who were curious as to the customs 

 of Formosa, he gravely defended the practice which 

 he said existed in that country, of cutting off the 

 heads of their wives and eating them, in case of 

 misconduct. " I think it is no sin," continued he, 

 •' to eat human flesh, but I must own it is a little 

 unmannerly." He admitted that he once ate part 

 of a black ; but they being always kept to hard 

 work, their flesh was tough and unsavoury. His 

 grandfather, he said, lived to 117, and was as 

 vigorous as a young man, in consequence of suck- 

 ing the blood of a viper warm every morning ; but 

 they had been forced to kill him, he being attacked 

 with a violent fit of the colic, and desiring them to 

 stab him, which, in obedience to another " custom 

 of the country," they had done. Splendide men- 

 dax! was certainly, in his younger days, this much 

 venerated friend of our great moralist. I should, 

 however, feel inclined to forgive much of his extra- 

 ordinary romancing for the admirable manner in 

 which he settled that chattering twaddler, Bishop 

 Burnet : 



" He was one day with Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Sarum, 

 who, after his warm manner, cried, ' Ay, you say so ; 

 but what proof can you give that you are not of China, 

 Japan, or any other country?* 'The manner of my 

 flight,* replied he, ' did not allow me to bring creden- 

 tials : but suppose your lordship were in Formosa, and 

 should say you are an Englishman, might not the P'or- 

 mosan as justly reply, You say you are an English- 

 man ; but what proof can you give that you are not of 

 any other country ? for you look as like a Dutchman 

 as any that ever traded to Formosa.' This silenced his 

 lordship." 



' James Crosslet. 



GRAFTS AND THE PARENT TREE. 



(Vol. vii., p. 365.) 



I was surprised to find it stated as " a fact " 

 by Mr. Inglebt, " that grafts, after some fifteen 



years, wear themselves out." A visit to one of the 

 great orchard counties would assure him of the 

 existence of tens of thousands of grafted apple and 

 pear trees, still in a healthy state, and from forty 

 to fifty years old, and more. There are grafted 

 trees of various kinds in this county, which to my 

 own knowledge are upwards of sixty years old ; 

 and I have little doubt but that there are some a 

 good deal older. 



The ancient Ribstone pippin, which stood in 

 Rlbstone Park, till it died in 1835, was believed 

 to have been grafted. Such was the opinion of 

 one of the gardeners there ; and a writer in the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, 1845, p. 21., states that in 

 1830 he fell in with the Ribstone pippin in great 

 abundance in Switzerland, in the valley of Sarnen ; 

 and he remarks that it is more probable this apple 

 was introduced into England from that country, 

 than the reverse. The question has not been con- 

 clusively settled. 



Notwithstanding " the belief that the graft pe- 

 rishes when the parent tree decays " is pronounced 

 by Mr. Inglbby to be a fond superstition, yet 

 there are certain facts, well known to orchard 

 growers, which give some warrant for it. Without 

 committing myself altogether to this doctrine, I 

 will state a few of them. 



It is well known that no cider or perry fruit is 

 so good, on first being introduced, as it is after 

 fifteen or twenty years of cultivation. A certain 

 period seems to be required to mature the new 

 sort, and bring it to its full vigour (long after it is 

 in full bearing) before it is at its best. The tree, 

 with all its grafted progeny, will last, perhaps fifty» 

 perhaps more than one hundred years, in a flou- 

 rishing state, and then they will begin everywhere 

 to decay ; nor has any device yet been successful 

 in arresting that general decay. 



Witness the rise, progress, and fall of the 

 Forest Stire of Gloucestershire, the Foxwhelp and 

 Bedstreak of Herefordshire, the Golden Pippin^ 

 and, more lately, the Ribstone Pippin, of which 

 there is an increasing complaint, not to mention 

 many others in the same condition. The first- 

 named apple is very nearly extinct, and the small 

 quantity of the fruit that is still to be had fetches 

 enormous prices. 



Whether this decay be owing to grafting, is a 

 question which can be decided only by the future 

 behaviour of the suckers from the original tree, 

 several of which from the tree at Ribstone Park 

 are now growing at Chiswick and elsewhere. 



I am aware that Dr. Lindley combats very 

 eagerly the doctrine that varieties of the apple and 

 pear, or indeed of any tree, die naturally of old 

 age; but the only incontrovertible fact which he 

 adduces in support of his argument, is the exist- 

 ence of the French White Beurre pear, which has 

 flourished from time immemorial. His denial of 

 the decay of the Golden Pippin, the Golden Har- 



