IMPROVEMENT OF VEGETABLE RACES. 



Still, there are some important points in fruit culture overlooked. One of the most 

 conspicuous of these is, that varieties may be found, or, if not existing, may be origi- 

 nated, to suit every portion of the United States. Because a fruit-grower in the State 

 of Maine, or the State of Louisiana, does not find, after making trial of the fruits that 

 are of the highest quality in New- York or Pennsylvania, that they are equally first 

 rate with him, it by no means follows that such wished-for varieties may not be pro- 

 duced. Although there are a few sorts of fruits, like the Bartlett Pear, and the Rox- 

 bury Russet Apple, that seem to have a kind of cosmopolitan constitution, by which 

 they are almost equally at home in a cool or a hot country, they are the exceptions, and 

 not the rule. The English Gooseberries may be said not to be at home anywhere in 

 our country, except in the cool, northern parts of New-England — Maine, for example. 

 The foreign grape is fit for out-of-door culture no-where in the United States, and even 

 the Newtown Pippin and the Spitzenberg apples, so unsurpassed on the Hudson, are 

 worth little or nothing on the Delaware. On the other hand, in every part of the 

 country, we see fruits constantly being originated — chance seedlings in the orchards, 

 perfectly adapted to the climate and soil, and occasionally of very fine quality. 



An apple tree which pleased the emigrant on his homestead on the Connecticut, is 

 carried, by means of grafts, to his new land in Missouri, and it fails to produce the 

 same fine pippins that it did at home. But he sows the seeds of that tree, and from 

 among many of indifferent quality, he will often find one or more that shall not only 

 equal or surpass its parent in all its ancient New-England flavor, but shall have a wes- 

 tern constitution, to make that flavor permanent in the land of its birth. 



In this way, and for the most part by the ordinary chances and results of culture, 

 and without a direct application of a scientific system, what may be called the natural 

 limits of any fruit tree or plant, may be largely extended. We say largely, because 

 there are certain boundaries beyond which the plants of the tropics cannot be accli- 

 mated. The sugar cane cannot, by any process yet known, be naturalized on Lake 

 Superior, or the Indian corn on Hudson's Bay. But every body at the South knows 

 that the range of the sugar cane has been gradually extended northward, more than 

 one hundred miles ; and the Indian corn is cultivated now, even far north in Canada. 



It is by watching these natural laws, as seen here and there in irregular examples, 

 and reducing them to something like a system, and acting upon the principles which 

 may be deduced from them, that we may labor diligently towards a certain result, and 

 not trust to chance, groping about in the dark, blindly. 



Although the two modes by which the production of a new variety of a fruit or 

 flower — the first by saving the seeds of the very fruit only, and the other by cross- 

 hreedmg Avhen the flowers are about expanding — are very well known, and have been 

 largely practiced by the florists and gardeners of Europe for many years, in bringing 

 into existence most of the fine vegetables and flowers, and many of the fruits that we 

 now possess, it is remarkable that little attention has been paid in all these eff'orts to 

 acclimating the new sorts by scientific reproduction from seed. Thus, in the case of 

 flowers — while the catalogues are filled with new Verbenas every year, no one, 

 can learn, has endeavored to originate a hardy Verbena, though one of the trailing 



