Miscellanies. „ 185 



- 



of which some are of a quality superior to those which France and 

 Belgium have heretofore furnished to England and that he is still ex- 

 pecting a greater number from many trees which sprang from the 

 seeds. The experiments which I desire will have less for their ob- 

 ject to obtain new varieties, than to afford positive ideas upon the 

 production of fruit trees, upon the difference in the kinds of our fruits, 

 and upon the connexions of the cultivated species with the wild spe- 

 cies. This subject merits so much the more the attention and in- 

 terests of physiologists, and of agriculturalists, inasmuch, as to the 

 present time we have nothing satisfactory, or founded upon observa- 

 tion. They contribute, at the same time, to multiplying good fruits, 

 which are the ornaments of the tables of the rich, and which offer 

 each day to the poor, enjoyments within their reach, and in a season 

 of want, an invaluable resource. 



The Royal and Central Society of Agriculture, having adopted the 

 proposition of M . Jaume Saint-Hilaire, Mirbel Sageret, Soulange 

 Bodin, andVilmorin. 



In its session of the 15th of March, 1832, it approved of the fol- 

 lowing prospectus, which was presented, in the name of this commit- 

 tee, by the author of this memoir. 



Premium to be awarded in 1848. — To the best memoir founded 

 upon experiments, which tend to prove, whether it is true, as the an- 

 cient agriculturalists believed, that the seeds and the stones of 

 our good fruits, being sown, and yielding young trees, placed at first 

 in a nursery, and afterwards transplanted into good earth, produce in 

 general, only wild and acid fruits, or whether it happens under these 

 circumstances, on the contrary, that the majority are fine fruits resem- 

 bling those of the trees, which furnished their seeds, or other va- 



rieties. 



The first prize, the sum of one thousand francs. 



01 



de Serves." 



The third prize, a medal of silver, idem. 

 The competitors will make known in their memoirs 

 1. If the fruit from which the seeds have been sown, proceeded, in 

 the case of the pear, from a tree grafted upon the same, or on the 

 quince; as to the apple, whether upon the same, or upon the paradisj 

 as to the peach, whether upon the prune, or the almond, or even up- 

 on a tree, which never before had been ingrafted. 



Vol- XXVL— No. 1. 24 



