SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 333 



portance in much relating to gardening and fruit growing. This fact is not 

 only of importance to us — more liable, as we fancy, than other people to the 

 injurious effect of spring frosts — but in almost every northern country we know 

 of. In North America, for example, in some of the best fruit-growing regions, 

 the planters are becoming thoroughly awake to the necessity of taking advan- 

 tage of the ground, so to say. They are watching, like careful generals, for 

 good positions so as to withstand the common enemy, frost. The observant 

 growers have noticed and experienced in their own practice the great advantage 

 from a few hundred feet of elevation, peach and other trees surviving in such 

 positions when they perish in the valleys or in the low lauds. The glowing sun 

 which ripens the shoots so well, does not absolve the cultivator from counting 

 with this important difference as to the growth of fruit. So, too, must we, if 

 our country is to be as fertile in useful fruit as it should be. Let us make 

 our orchards on the slopes and grow wheat and other crops in the valleys. — 

 London Garden. 



The above extract is given to illustrate the fact that upon both sides of the 

 ocean this all important matter of "elevation in fruit culture" is receiving at- 

 tention. 



GRAFT HYBRIDS. 



Mr. J. B. Stone, of Wacousta, asks through the Lansing Republican the old 

 question whether an apple tree can be so grafted or budded as to produce an 

 apple that will be half sweet and half sour, that is, so as to be perceptible? 

 To this Prof. Beal replies as follows : 



Your correspondent asks a question which has been going the rounds for a 

 hundred years or more. During the past year there have been several questions 

 and answers on this topic in the New York Tribune. One man says that his 

 grandfather succeeded, by split buds, in producing a tree which bore apples, 

 each of which was part sweet and part sour. I wrote for samples of the apples, 

 which were kindly sent. They proved to be the old well-known "sweet-and- 

 sour." The fruit of this variety has ridges running from calyx to stem; some 

 of the specimens are ridged irregularly. The ribs, ridges, of prominent parts 

 are decidedly acid ; the hollows are sweet. This fruit is occasionally met at 

 our fairs and meetings of the State Pomological Society. Dr. Warder, one of 

 our most eminent pomologists, says: "No educated nurseryman will now 

 believe the old story of its having been produced by the combination of the 

 buds of two varieties, a sweet and a sour." 



I suppose two half-buds can be made to grow together. If they should 

 unite, I cannot see how we could get apples as above mentioned. We should 

 expect all the apples to be alike which grew from one side of the united bud, 

 and those alike which grew from the other half of the bud, or all alike which 

 grew on the limb arising from the united halves of two buds. I know of no 

 botanist, vegetable physiologist, or scientific person who now believes it 

 possible to produce apples which are half sweet and half sour, by uniting two 

 half -buds from trees, one of which bears sour apples and the other sweet. Still, 

 there are persons who are certain that it can be done. Probably nothing that 

 I shall write will change their views. 



