NEAV VARIETIES OF FRUITS. 29 



the best fruits which were eaten at his table, without being 

 able to produce a single fruit worthy of cultivation. Oth- 

 ers in that country, as the Alfroys, had, during three suc- 

 cessive generations, adopted the same course, and with no 

 better success. 



Their practice had been to plant, uniformly, the seeds 

 only of the very best or ameliorated fruits, and to select 

 from these, as the subjects of their experiments, those 

 young plants only, which were furnished with large leaves, 

 and large and fine wood. M. Poiteau ascribes the disas- 

 trous results of their experiments to these combined causes, 

 and further states it as a fact recorded by several authors, 

 that the seeds of the Winter Bon Chretien always produce 

 a detestable fruit. Mr. Knight has asserted that the seed 

 of the Wild Pear, fertilized by the stamens of the blos- 

 som of an ameliorated one, will yield a better fruit than 

 the seeds of an ameliorated pear. 



M. Van Mons has stated that " the Belgians give no 

 preference to the seeds of table fruits, when they plant to 

 obtain new ameliorated kinds." Those seedlings which 

 are without thorns, and with stout wood, and large leaves, 

 are by them rejected, as these are the signs of an early or 

 inferior fruit. M. Van Mons ascribes the success of their 

 experiments in obtaining so many fruits, which are in all 

 respects so extraordinary, to the principle which they had 

 adopted in the beginning that in proportion as a fruit 

 becomes removed from the wild state, or state of nature, 

 by repeated regeneration, or planting always the kernels 

 or stones of the last production, in that same degree will 

 the fruit become ameliorated, until it attains the highest 

 perfection of which a fruit is susceptible. 



During the process of the amelioration, and of each suc- 

 cessive remove, the austerity, or superabundant acid, which 

 is the peculiar characteristic of the wild fruit, is dimin- 

 ished, and the saccharine matter is increased. But as a 

 certain quantity of acid is an essential ingredient in every 

 perfect fruit, it will appear self-evident that the process 

 of regeneration, when carried too far, may prove injurious, 

 and that excessive sweetness, by a short transition, degen- 

 erates into insipidity. 



It is asserted by Mr. Knight, that, generally, the old va- 

 rieties of fruit begin to decay, first, in the colder latitudes ; 

 and that a fruit which there begins to decay, may yet be 



