552 APPENDIX. 



one parent tree. Still the doctrine has found supporters abroad, 

 and at least one hearty advocate in this country. 



Mr. Kenrick, in his new American Orchardist, adopts this doc- 

 trine, and in speaking of Pears, says : " I shall, in the following 

 pages, designate some of these in the class of old varieties, once 

 the finest of all old pears, whose duration we had hoped, but in 

 v^in, to perpetuate. For, except in certain sections of the city, 

 and some very few and highly favoured situations in the country 

 around, they (the old sorts; have become either so uncertain in 

 their bearing so barren so unproductive or so miserably 

 blighted so mortally diseased that they are no longer to be 

 trusted ; they are no longer what they once were with us, and 

 what many of them are still described to be by most foreign 

 writers." 



Mr. Kenrick accordingly arranges in separate classes the 

 Old and New Pears ; and while he praises the latter, he can 

 hardly find epithets sufficiently severe to bestow on the former 

 poor unfortunates. Of the Doyenne he says : " This most 

 eminent of all Pears has now become an outcast, intolerable 

 even to sight;" of the Brown Beurre, "once the best of all 

 Pears now become an outcast." The St. Germain " has 

 long since become an abandoned variety," &c., &c. 



Many persons have, therefore, supposing that these delicious 

 varieties had really anfl quietly given up the ghost, made no 

 more inquiries after them, and only ordered from the nurseries 

 the new varieties. And this, not always, as they have confessed 

 to us, without some lingering feeling of regret at thus aban- 

 doning old and tried friends for new comers which, it must 

 be added, not unfrequently failed to equal the good qualities of 

 their predecessors. 



But, while this doctrine of Knight's has found ready sup- 

 porters, we are bound to add that it has also met with sturdy 

 opposition. At the head of the opposite party we may rank 

 the most distinguished vegetable physiologist of the age, Pro- 

 fessor De Candolle, of Geneva. Varieties, says De Candolle, 

 will endure and remain permanent, so long as man chooses to 

 take care of them, as is evident from the continued existence, 

 to this day, of sorts, the most ancient of those which have been 

 described in books. By negligence, or through successive bad 

 seasons, they may become diseased, but careful culture will 

 restore them, and retain them, to all appearance, for ever. 



Our own opinion coincides, in the main, with that of De 

 Candolle. While we admit that, in the common mode of propa- 

 gation, varieties are constantly liable to decay or become com- 

 paratively worthless, we believe that this is owing not to natu- 

 ral limits set upon the duration of a variety ; that it does not 

 depend on the longevity of the parent tree ; but upon the care 



