176 



POMOLOGICAL REFORM. 



rest him, as the celebrated Reyboldts of 

 Delaware find in their thousand acre peach 

 orchard. 



With this great and increasing attention 

 to the cultivation of fruit, comes also the 

 continual production of new varieties. Many 

 of these spring up accidentally from seed ; 

 others are the product of seeds gathered 

 from choice varieties, and planted with a 

 view to improved sorts ; and a few are the 

 result of hybridising, pursued by the more 

 scientific gardeners and experimentalists. 



Of course a large proportion of these new 

 seedlings are either of too indifferent quali- 

 ty to be worth notice, or they are second- 

 rate ; or they are inferior, or only equal to 

 many sorts already in cultivation. 



With the well known partiality of parents 

 for their own offspring, it is common enough 

 to see the originators of these second or 

 third-rate seedlings pressing them upon 

 public attention as fruits of the finest quali- 

 ty — unsurpassed and unsurpassable ; and 

 having, as they conceive, an undoubted 

 right to pass final judgment on their merits, 

 they confidently ask the public to buy and 

 plant these new sorts, which, when fairly 

 proved, often turn out of little or no value, 

 or decidedly inferior to those already in 

 cultivation.* 



Confident as we are, that the United 

 States will produce many, as it has already 

 produced a few, new varieties of fruit equal 

 to any in the world, and superior to any for 

 our soil and climate, it is becoming highly 

 necessary that some system should be adopt- 

 ed which will protect the public against a 

 flood of new varieties of little or no value. 



Such a safeguard can only be found, by 

 taking the judgment of a new variety, the 

 describing and recommending of the same, 



* We have almost daily proofs of this ; and while we 

 write, we have just received a sample of fruits of a "new seed- 

 ling pear." highly praised, but which, on examination, proves 

 to be a well known old sort that we have known for twenty 

 years, and which no person who had ever seen it once, could 

 afterwards mistake I 



out of the hands of all but nomologists of ac- 

 knowledged acquaintance with all the stan- 

 dard sorts, or the fruit committees of horti- 

 cultural societies well qualified for the pur- 

 pose. 



Whatever may be the natural fondness 

 of a cultivator for good fruit, observation 

 will soon convince any one acquainted with 

 the matter, that no person is competent to 

 judge of the relative qualities of a new va- 

 riety, but one who is already conversant 

 with all those leading sorts of acknowledg- 

 ed character which exist in the best collec- 

 tions in the country. Ignorant of these, the 

 novice often rates a fruit as of first rate 

 quality, which a moment's examination, by 

 an experienced judge of fruits, determines 

 to be of second quality, and inferior to a 

 large number already known. A natural 

 pride prompts the novice, who believes he 

 has produced something of value to the 

 public, to give it his name, and distribute 

 it extensively among horticulturists and pro- 

 pagators of fruit. Hence we see catalogues 

 needlessly swelled with the names of do- 

 zens of new fruits, not one third of which 

 upon trial ever prove at all worthy of cul- 

 tivation. 



The only remedy lies in restricting the 

 right to describe, name, and publish, a new 

 fruit, to competent pomologists, in the same 

 way that the right to describe and name 

 a newly discovered plant is confined to bo- 

 tanists only, insects to entomologists, birds 

 to ornithologists, etc., etc.* 



By adopting this course, and establishing 

 some standard by which a new fruit must be 

 measured, with fixed rules governing the 

 nomenclature, and description of fruits, po- 

 mologists and fruit committees will have 

 something definite to guide them; the pub- 

 lic will have some guarantee for the value 



* Of course the originator of a new variety which proves 

 of real merit, should retain his right to suggest the na^ne for 

 the variety, which the pomologist describing it, if it were a 

 proper and significant one, would be bound to adopt. 



