184 Miscellanies. 



have not found any thing positive, or satisfactory. One fact like that 

 which we offer, in the nursery of M. Sageret, is not able to over- 

 throw, at once, a theory founded upon such a weight of opinion, but 

 it seems to merit the attention of nurserymen the more, as this theo- 

 ry has been prejudicial to the perfection of our fruits ; because, once 

 admitted, we cease to make experiments, and to wait the result du- 

 ring fifteen years. I think then that the Royal and Central Agricul- 

 tural Society ought to promote some experiments upon the produce 

 of the seeds of our best fruits, by proposing a prize, which will be 

 awarded in fifteen years, and which shall have for its object to know 

 whether it is true, that the grains of the best fruits sown in a proper 

 soil, yielding young trees, placed at first in a nursery, afterwards 

 transplanted into good land, produce in a majority of cases, acid and 

 degenerate fruits, as all ancient agriculturalists have supposed. I 

 believe that transplantation is necessary, in order to ameliorate the 

 fruits of trees proceeding from the seeds, seeing that all vegetables 

 select in the earth, the moisture proper to their particular nature, 

 and that they exhaust the earth in a few years, whence proceeds 

 the theory of rotations. When a tree is planted, or a seed sowrr in 

 any land whatever, we have not the means for knowing the elements 

 with which they are nourished. It is a stranger that is established 

 in the midst of a country, where the native inhabitants are capable of 

 living for many years, without exhausting the soil ; and although the 

 trees, drawing their nourishment from greater depths than the annual 

 plants, are less difficult than these, it is useful to change them, and 

 to offer them an abundant and various nourishment. 



It is objected perhaps, against the utility of transplanting, in order 

 to ameliorate the species, that some of our good pears have been 

 found wild in the forests where they have never undergone any trans- 

 plantation ; but five or six kinds of pears or of apples have come from 

 the forests, from some thousands of seeds, of good fruits, scattered 

 during many ages, either by birds or hunters, proving only that these 

 grains have fallen into a vein of earth so favorable to their particular 

 nature that they have not had need of a tender culture, or of trans- 

 plantation. In proposing a prize for ascertaining if the ancients have 

 deceived themselves upon the products of the seeds of good fruits, 

 my opinion was at first founded upon conjecture, which was changed 

 into a pobability, since Mr. Knight the President of the Society of 

 Horticulture of London has announced that having sown some seeds 

 of good pears he has already obtained twelve varieties of new pears 



