Four New Types of Fruits. 



New types of fruits are nearly always misjudged. They are com- 

 pared with the most similar type of well-known fruit, even though the 

 two may be very unlike. It should be remembered that wholly new 

 types of fruits are not to be measured by existing standards. They 

 are not introduced, as a rule, for the purpose of supplanting other fruits 

 but with the intent that they shall add variety to our fruit-lists, and 

 occupy places which are now vacant. If they fill an unsupplied 

 demand or if they create a new demand, then they may be counted 

 successful. It is often said of the Crandall currant, for instance, that 

 it can never supplant the common currants and is therefore worthless. 

 It is true that it can not compete with our present currants, but it may 

 fill a place in the market or in the home demand which no other fruit 

 fills; if so, it is worthy, and we shall grow it at the same time that we 

 increase the plantations of red and white currants. The following new 

 types must ultimately stand or fall upon their own intrinsic characters. 



It must also be said that new types of fruits and vegetables usually 

 suffer from injudicious praise. Their merits are so much exaggerated 

 that great disappointment results when the varieties come to be known, 

 even though they really possess commendable features. Catalogue 

 descriptions are so often overdrawn and colored beyond the point of 

 belief, that they create a presumption against the novelty in question 

 in the minds of intelligent persons. Novelties are often short-lived 

 because of this disappointment which follows excessive praise; while if 

 the same varieties had been introduced quietly and with candid 

 descriptions, they might persist and eventually become acquisitions to 

 our horticulture. Few fruits have suffered more from this unwise 

 applause than the four which I am about to discuss, and I feel that I 

 must create a wholly new basis of criticism before I can command the 

 attention of careful men. 



Simon ob Apricot Plum. — Prunus Simonii.* 

 Something like a dozen years ago, this fruit began to be talked 

 about in North America, although it did not gain any notoriety until 



*Prunus Simonii, Carriere, Rev. Hort. xliv. Ill (1873). Persica Simonii, 

 Decaisne, Fruit, du Museum, vii. 43 (1872-5). 



