260 
are as plentiful as blackberries; but facts seem unduly scarce ; especially do 
different reporters bring forward most contradictory statements. We are told by 
one that such an apple has entirely disappeared ; a second says, Oh, no, you will 
find it growing at such a place ; a third says, I know the trees you mean, they are 
not such and such an apple, they are so and so—naming another variety. Such 
is the ignorance of many growers of the names of their apples, for which they 
frequently use names given by themselves for their own convenience, that it 
appears extremely probably that many that are supposed to be extinct would be 
found to be still cultivated under local names, or under no names at all, were a 
sufficient search made for them. 
The general aspect of the question is as to the longevity of varieties propa- 
gated by buds or grafts without the intervention of sexual reproduction. Andrew 
Knight says ‘‘ that certain varieties of some species of fruit which have been long 
cultivated cannot now be made to grow in the same soils and under the same mode 
of management which was a century ago so perfectly successful,” and adds his 
belief that all attempts to propagate these kinds have been given up in conse- 
quence. It would be most desirable to know what is the present state of the 
individual varieties of which Knight half a century ago reported in these terms. 
He adopted the theory that the life of no variety, however grafted and budded, 
would survive the period of existence to which it would have attained if allowed 
to remain as an individual; and that when the original seedling tree died from 
natural exhaustion and old age, trees derived from it by grafts, buds, cuttings, 
or otherwise, likewise disappeared from the same cause. Innumerable instances 
can be adduced, however, to show that this is certainly not the case ; some of 
them even among apples. Some advocates of the dying out theory, when unable 
to deny the pressure of these facts, shift their ground a little and take up a fresh 
position, bringing forward facts that, if established, are of much scientific interest. 
We cannot deny, they say, that such a sort of apple still grows freely and 
vigorously when grafted in a suitable manner. But look at the fruit, it is not the 
same fruit at all—large, succulent, vigorous enough, certainly, but not the same 
fruit ; it is quite lacking in the special qualities that we value in the original kind. 
Tf this change is real, and not a mere matter of opinion ; if, moreover, it is 
persistent, and shown not to be due to a different stock being used, and especially 
not to the mere youth of the younger-grafted trees, it must be taken to show a 
power of variation of a cumulative character in plants propagated in a non-sexual 
manner, differing both from graft-hybridism and from the sudden sports that 
sometimes occur and can be perpetuated by grafting. Our Pomological Committee 
will produce a work that will, there can be no doubt, be something more than a 
useful book of reference to the apple grower, or a handsome volume for the 
drawing-room table, and I hope they will verify for us all the facts they can 
collect bearing on this subject, not only for our present information but for the 
use of future investigators. Darwin has recently published another work which 
indirectly bears on this subject. From the conclusion he arrives at we may think 
it extremely probable that varieties propagated by buds and grafts only will, in 
the course of time, die out, but that whilst the time necessary would be shorter 
