The Scientific Production of New Fruits. 243 



apples, that are among the most hardy, are the most subject to sun-^cald and 

 blight. 



Having given you the hardy side of our question, I will now call your at- 

 tention to the opposite, or tender side. 



That tender or diseased varieties can produce healthy and hardy seedlings, 

 we think few will maintain; yet that has been the general method resorted to. 



Take, for instance, the grape, such as the lona, Diana, Isabella, and others 

 that succeed scarcely anywhere, and hybridize them with the Euroiiean 

 grape, which does well nowhere in the Atlantic States, and how could Ave ex- 

 pect the seedlings from those to succeed, when our most hardy and healthy 

 native species hybridized with the foreign grape has not done so? 



While we might admit the propriety of using the European grape under 

 some particular circumstances, we believe the indiscriminate use of it to be 

 not only detrimental to the interest of fruit growers, but to the progress of 

 horticulture. If our resources were exhausted there might be some reason 

 for it, but while there is such an ample field before us not yet explored, of 

 richer and more hardy grapes, there is neither reason nor propriety in it. 



Having shown that we need not go to Russia for hardy apples or to Europe 

 for tender grapes to improve our fruits, we now shall endeavor to show where 

 we should go and how to improve them. It is an admitted fact that a species 

 growing wild will remain and continue to produce its kind until brought 

 under domestication; then it will change and sport into varieties. 



Herein lies the principle almostunobserved that produces all the imjDrove- 

 ment in our fruit. For it follows as a corollary that if a species improves 

 under domestication, a variety of the species will improve by cultivation. It 

 therefore follows that the location where a variety can be grown to the very 

 highest state of perfection is the place where the best specimens are grown 

 and they must produce the best seed for improvement. 



This agrees with facts as far as observations go, for nearly all our improve- 

 ments in cereals and vegetables have been produced by the judicious selec- 

 tion of seeds from the best developed and most perfect specimens in accord- 

 ance with the objects we have had in view. 



This corresponds with our own observation, for in the selection of seeds 

 from the best specimens of a number of varieties, very many of the seedlings 

 showed a marked improvement. 



The success of Mr. John Burr, of this place, in his native seedling grapes, 

 warrants the same conclusion, for it is a remarkable fact that nearly all his 

 seedlings are an improvement upon their parents. Why should this not be 

 the case, when all the energies of nature are exerted, under favorable cir- 

 cumstances and cultivation, to unfold and develop the saccharine principle 

 and quality of the fruit, which, in some instances, amounts to as much as 

 twenty-five per cent, of increase ? And why should not the seed that con- 

 tains the most active living principle also unfold and develop? 



That it does develop, we have many examples. The Concord grape is, 

 perhaps, one of the most marked instances, as it came directly from the wild 



