CALENDAR AND INDEX. 145 



variety will take chiefly after its polliniferous or male 

 parent ; and that at the same time it will acquire some of 

 the constitutional peculiarities of its mother. Thus the male 

 parent of the Downton Strawberry was the Old Black, the 

 female a kind of Scarlet. In Coe's Golden Drop Plum, the 

 father was the Yellow Magnum Bonum, the mother the 

 Green Gage ; and in the Elton Cherry, the White Heart 

 was the male parent, and the Graffion the female. 



The limits within which experiments of this kind must be 

 confined are, however, narrow. It seems that cross fertili- 

 zation will not take place at all, or very rarely, between dif- 

 ferent species, unless these species are nearly related to each 

 other : and that the offspring of two distinct species is 

 itself sterile, or if it possesses the power of multiplying itself 

 by seed, its progeny returns back to the state of one or other 

 of its parents. Hence it seldom or never has happened that 

 domesticated fruits have had such an origin. We have no 

 varieties raised between the Apple and the Pear, or the 

 Plum and Cherry, or the Gooseberry and the Currant. On 

 the other hand, new varieties obtained by the intermixture 

 of two pre-existing varieties are not less prolific, but, on the 

 contrary, often more so than either of their parents : wit- 

 ness the numerous sorts of Flemish Pears which have been 

 raised by cross fertilization from bad bearers, within the last 

 thirty years, and which are the most prolific- trees with 

 which gardeners are acquainted ; witness also Mr. Knight's 

 Cherries, raised between the May Duke and the Graffion, 

 and the Coe's Plum already mentioned. It is therefore to 

 the intermixture of the most valuable existing varieties of 

 fruit that gardeners should trust for the amelioration of their 

 stock. By this operation the Pears that are in eating in the 

 spring have been rendered as delicious and as fertile as 

 those of the autumn ; and there is no apparent reason why 

 those very early, but worthless sorts, such as the Muscat 

 Robert, which usher in the season of Pears, should not bs 

 brought to a similar state of perfection. 



