EAISING FKUITS FROM SEED. 



vjiliiable map. But it may be a long time yet before it is completed, or before we 

 shall have collected the great mass of facts and statistics which the execution of the 

 work will doiuand. 



Meantime, we must urge upon fruit-growers, both professional and amateur, every 

 man or woman, every boy or girl, who can obtain seeds of fine fruits, to plant them 

 and rear them into bearing trees. We thiid< it scarcely admits of a doubt but that 

 this is the true way — we had almost said the onltj way to obtain varieties completely 

 adapted to all local circumstances ; we can read this plainly in the history of nearly 

 all our native fruits. As a general thing, their culture is most successful in the region 

 of their origin. Some, like certain genera of plants, are confined to narrow limits, 

 beyond which they do not appear to prosper; others admit of a greater dift'usion, and 

 adapt themselves to a greater variety of circumstances. 



We find the most forcible illustration of this in the case of northern and southern 

 fruits. The Fameme, Pomme Grise, and some other apples of the north, are best in 

 the coldest latitudes, and fail as they go south, until they become worthless before 

 they reach the Mississippi. So with southern fruits, like the Rawles' Janet^ Tewkes- 

 bury Winter Blush, &c., that succeed only where the seasons are very long, and are 

 entirely worthless in the north, where the spring opens about the first of May, and 

 autumnal frosts come as early as the first of October. We believe the Farter and 

 Baldwin are no where so good as in Massachusetts ; the Neictown Fij)pin is best on 

 Long Island and the Iludson ; the Spitzenburgh in New York, &c. 



Aside from the imquestionable fticts of the case, it is clearly natural that this should 

 be so. A variety springing up from seed in any given locality, is, in the course of 

 its production, endowed with a constitution and habits adapted to that locality in a 

 particular manner — just as men are more at home in the climate and mode of life 

 of their native country than in any other, and are, in a measure, proof against local 

 diseases that strangers would immediately fall victims to. This is all in strict con- 

 formity to the wnse, harmonious laws, that regulate and govern all nature, animate 

 and inanimate. 



Now, we are an impatient people — a "fast" people, to use a current term — and 

 we are quite loth to embark in any thing that does not promise immediate results. 

 Our young men greatly prefer hazarding their lives for the chance of securing a lump 

 of California gold to working a fortune patiently but surely out of their paternal acres. 

 To such people, raising new and fine fruits from seed, where perhaps not more than 

 one in ten thousand may be a prize, is a slow business, and any thing we may say 

 will probably fail to convince them that it is not quite so slow as they imagine. But 

 we shall try, nevertheless. 



Suppose, for instance, we wish to produce some seedling strawberries ; we take the 

 finest berries of the best kinds we can procure; they must be perfectly ripe; we either 

 wash the seeds out of the pulp, or we crush the berries, and spread out pulp, seeds, 

 and all, to dry. We then sow either the clean seeds, or dried pulp and seed, in light 

 earth, and by autumn we have nice plants. These we protect during winter 



