NATIVK AND rOUKICIN I'KriT.S 



NATIVE AND FOliEION FliUITS. 



15 Y S. L. GOOD ATX, SACO, ME. 



Ir HAS been so often said that native varieties of fruit are necessarily better adapted to 

 the locality where they grew, because, thus growing, they acquire characteristics 

 peculiarly fitting them to such place, that tlie idea has almost passed into an axiom 

 and is assented to by perhaps a large majority of cultivators, and any attempt to 

 advance an opinion at variance with it may appear simply ridiculous. Yet, as every- 

 body ill this hn]>py country is at liberty to be just as ridiculous, or just as heretical as 

 ho pleases, you will doubtless give me leave to say that one individual does not assent 

 to it. 



I am reminded of the subject at this time by the following- passage in an article 

 "On raising fruits from seed," in the August number of the Horticulturist : "A 

 variety springing up from the seed, in any given locality, is, in the course of its produc- 

 tion, endowed with a constitution and habits adapted to that locality, in a particular 

 manner," <fcc. Now, if I understand the writer, he means to assert that sometime 

 between the germination of the seed and the production of fruit, the plant is endowed 

 with its constitution and habits, and that these vary according to locality. If he does 

 not mean this I take no exception to it ; but if he does — and what other construction 

 can be fairly put on the words " springing up from the seed," — I join issue with him 

 and advance the opinion that it does not teach the facts in the case, but that, contrari- 

 wise, the habits and constitution are decided or bestowed during the grotvtlt of the seed 

 from which the plant is destined to spring, and that when this seed is once matured it 

 contains wrapped up within it that which stamps indelibly the character of the tree 

 and fruit to grow from it, and that the accident of locality, soil, climate, or other, affects 

 only the development of that character and not the character itself. 



It is no part of my attempt to explain the laws which govern the production of 

 varieties, for I believe that those who have bestowed most research into them have 

 the livliest sense of the profundity of their ignorance. All I maintain is, that what- 

 ever they may be, their operation is at an end before the germination of the seed. 

 We hear no such notions advanced as to the necessary superiority of native varieties 

 by practical gardeners, in respect to vegetables. They take the utmost pains to pro- 

 cure seed possessing the requisite qualities ; but having planted it, do they attempt to 

 change these qualities ? Not at all. They labor diligently, and only to secure the 

 most favorable conditions for their development, leaving the production of new and 

 varied properties to successive generations, from seed, and anticipate such changes 

 only in the seed. 



We might ask what is a native ? The child of European emigrants, born the day 

 after arrival here, may be, technically, a native ; but is it the less of foreign origin ? 

 The Swedish turnip has been grown here many years, and yet is commonly denomi- 

 nated a foreign variety. The Petre pear grew from a seed matured in England, and ^ 

 because that seed was brought across the water and planted in Pennsylvania it is called 



