NATIVE ASTD FOEEIGN FKUITS. 



a native fruit, and so entitled to consideration as possessing tlie supposed excellencies 

 of a native sort. Do such frivolous distinctions make any difference? Does anybody 

 suppose that scions of the Petre pear sent to England ^yould produce a fruit varying 

 from what would have grown had the seed been originally planted there ? — provided, 

 of course, that the conditions of development in each case are equally favorable to the 

 health, simply, of the tree. Or, that if the seed which produced the Dix pear had 

 been sown in Belgium, and not in Boston, and trees or scions thence brought to Bos- 

 ton, would the tree have proved less adapted to cultivation in Massachusetts, or the 

 fruit worse ? 



If the current opinion be correct, we ought always to find fruits better where they 

 orio'inate than elsewhere. Is it so ? Can no one recollect instances of fruit, which 

 originated in the Eastern States, being returned from the west so changed for the 

 better as to escape recognition by the most critical judges until scions again set here, 

 and afibrded their former facilities for development, produced a well known and easily 

 recognized acquaintance of former years ? The Rostiezer is understood to be a seed- 

 lino- of Germany, where it yielded a second or third rate fruit ; but trees or scions 

 brought here, produce a fruit so much superior, as to be almost, if not quite, a stand- 

 ard of excellence in its season, and the tree proves as hardy as any native of Maine — 

 and surely we ought to know something about hardiness where the mercury 

 sometimes (rarely, to be sure,) freezes in the thermometer. 



Suppose you plant a pear seed at Rochester and it yields a desirable fruit, and you 

 send me scions, which upon trial here prove unable to withstand the severity of winter, 

 what does it prove? If it proves anything, only this — that if the tree had been 

 grown here, it would not have survived to bear fruit, for seedlings are more tender in 

 infancy than at adult age. You send scions to other distant places, and in one it is 

 found of better flavor and in another worse ; in one more productive, and in another 

 less. And this only shows that had the tree grown in either of these localities it 

 would have been deemed more or less valuable. 



Experience teaches that some fruits are adapted to a wide range of soil and climate, 

 and others restricted to narrow limits. What could there have possibly been in the 

 accidents connected with the growth of the seedling Newtoivn Pippin, which deprived 

 it of the capability of developing its excellence away from the neighborhood of the 

 Hudson ? or what endowed the seedling Green Gage with the power to exhibit its 

 worth through scores of degrees of longitude, and nobody knows how many of latitude. 

 Nothing at all. The endowment lies further back — viz., in the seed. The proposition 

 here combatted seems to me to have been assumed from the first, rather than proved, 

 and so plausible as to have escaped examination, thus leading many astray. 



Was not even Downing somewhat wide of the mark Avhen he penned the following 

 sentence — "That in proportion as a variety has been brought originally from a locality 

 in Europe most nearly similar to that where we would grow it, are its vigor and pro- 

 ductiv^eness retained in our own soil." Now, take the Flemish Beauty, which is named 

 as perhaps the best proved of any foreign variety in this locality, as perfectly hardy, 

 (more so than the Fulton, which is credited to Maine, though the seed grew in Mass 



