NEW VARIETIES OF FRUITS. 27 



The late Hon. John Lowell, who prepared the article on 

 fruits in the " New American Gardener," has warned us 

 in that work, and in his day, to beware respecting some of 

 them. He was well known with us as first-rate authority. 



In the markets of the city, which formerly abounded with 

 them, they are no longer, or but rarely, to be seen. The 

 cultivators who furnish its supplies have given up their cul- 

 tivation. Like the barren fig-tree, they have been destroyed 

 but not without cause ; for if they had riot been ac- 

 cursed, their fertility and good qualities were gone ; and 

 they were no longer fruitful, but as the sources of vexation. 



The practice of renaming those new or unknown varie- 

 ties, whose original names are lost, after these old kinds, is 

 objectionable, inasmuch as it is caiculated to mislead, 

 and to falsify the proofs of their mortality. From some 

 fancied similitude, the barbarous names of antiquity are 

 brought down upon us, applied to existing varieties. 

 From semblance of name alone, the Gergon, or Jargon, 

 of antiquity has reappeared : it has been reclaimed, not 

 merely as kindred, but as, in all probability, identical with 

 varieties still existing.* 



According to the theory advanced by Mr. Knight and 

 others, and confirmed by their experience, the different va- 

 rieties of fruit have their periods of existence fixed by the 

 immutable laws of nature ; and after a certain time, either 

 sooner or later, comes on their decline and final extinction. 



I shall offer some evidence to show that the complaints 

 of defection are not confined to us alone they have 

 reached us from other and remote quarters. Bosc, in 

 Nouv. Cours Complet, has asserted the change that in 

 France many of the kinds have become, from some cause, 

 so altered in the short space of half a century, that it is some- 

 times difficult to know them, even in the exact descriptions 

 and precise engravings of Duhamel ; and with regard to 

 many kinds described by Quintinie, the case is still worse. 



* See t. 108 of the Pomological Magazine, where the authority 

 of Menage and Duchat, and of Merlet, are brought forward to justify 

 the supposition, that the Jargonelle, asserted by them to be derived 

 from Jargon, anciently Gergon, in Italian Gergo, in Spanish Geri 

 cona, all corruptions of Gracum, and by the inference of Merlet the 

 Pyrum Tarentinum of Cato and Columella, the Numidianum GrtB- 

 cum of Pliny, the Graculum of Macrobius, that all these, named 

 or described near two thousand years ago, are but one and the same ; 

 and no other than the Jargonelle of the present day. 



