ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 249 



affect the size, color, hardness, or in any respect, the gene 

 ral character of the fruit. 



It is in these aspects that Knight s method must always 

 be preferred as a practical system. We can obtain a return 

 for our labor in one-fifth the time ; and, what is even more 

 important, we can regulate, before-hand, the results within 

 certain limits. The new fruit is to be made up of the quali 

 ties of its parents in various proportions. We cannot deter 

 mine what the proportions shall be, but we can determine 

 what parents shall be selected. Nor is it at all improbable 

 that, when knowledge has become more exact by a longer 

 and larger experience, the breeder of fruit may cross the 

 varieties with nearly the same certainty of result as does 

 the breeder of stock. It is upon this feature, the power 

 which science has over the results to be obtained, that we 

 look with the greatest interest ; and we urge upon scientific 

 cultivators the duty of perfecting our fruits by judicious 

 breeding. 



PRUNING ORCHARDS. 



THE habit of early spring pruning has been handed down 

 to us from English customs, and farmers do it because it 

 always has been done. Besides, about this time, men have 

 leisure, and would like to begin the season s work; and 

 pruning seems quite a natural employment with which to 

 introduce the labors of the year. 



It is not possible for America, but more emphatically for 

 western cultivators to do worse than to pattern upon the 

 example of British and Continental authorities in the matter 

 of orchards and vineyards. The summers of England are 

 moist, cool, and deficient in light. Our summers are exactly 

 the reverse dry, fervid, and brilliant. The stimuli of the 



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