143 



CALENDAR AND INDEX. 



JANUARY. 



THE clear icicle shines in the sun's faint beam, 

 Congealed is the river, the lake, and the stream, 

 The trees are all leafless, while sullen winds roar, 

 And Nature benumbed, seems her fate to deplore. 



As the weather at this season of the year is generally 

 unfavourable to any employment in the Orchard or Fruit 

 Garden, I cannot occupy a few pages more appropriately 

 than in directing the reader's attention to subjects connected 

 with improvements in the several species and varieties of 

 Fruits ; for it must be admitted that there is no kind of 

 fruit, however delicious, that may not be deteriorated, or 

 however worthless, that may not be ameliorated, by particu- 

 lar modes of management ; so that after a given variety 

 shall have been created, its merits may be either elicited or 

 destroyed by the cultivator. In this place those practices 

 only need be considered that tend to improvement. 



It is an indubitable fact, that all our fruits, without excep- 

 tion, have been so much ameliorated by various circum- 

 stances, that they no longer bear any resemblance in respect 

 of quality to their original. Who, for instance, would 

 recognize the wild parent of the Green Gage Plum in the 

 austere Sloe, or that of the delicious Pippin Apples in the 

 worthless acid Crab 1 Or, what resemblance can be traced 

 between our famous Beurre Pears, whose flesh is so succu- 

 lent, lich and melting, and that hard, stony, astringent fruit, 

 which even birds and animals refuse to eat t Yet these are 

 undoubted cases of improvement, resulting from time and 

 skill patiently and constantly in action. But it would be of 

 little service to mankind that the quality of any fruit should 

 be improved, unless we adopt some efficient and certain 



