92 Remarks on the Duration of the 



agated by grafting, through successive generations, without losing 

 their unheakhy taint, ahhough placed on the most healthy stocks. 

 The common gold-blotched leaved apricot is a familiar illustra- 

 tion. Most of those varieties of weeping trees, as the weeping 

 ash, cherry, laburnum, &c., which are the results of accidental 

 deformity and disease, are continually perpetuated by grafting, 

 without losing their distorted and anomalous forms, by being 

 joined to healthy individuals of the same species. An apple, 

 known in some of the nurseries as the Vine pippin, so called 

 from its curiously twisted branches, is nothing more than the 

 Newton pippin, propagated from some unhealthy and deformed 

 branch. Do not these undeniable facts prove that it is in the high- 

 est degree probable, that those fruits which now occur in some dis- 

 tricts, quite deteriorated and worthless, are so merely from having 

 been propagated in those districts from diseased individuals of such 

 varieties? If we suppose that but four trees of a new variety are 

 first propagated from the original tree — that by chance one of these 

 grafts has been placed upon a diseased stock, and that this tree 

 falls into the hands of a cultivator or nurseryman who propagates 

 thousands from it, disseminating them throughout the whole 

 country, will not the disease be continued more or less through- 

 out all the trees which he rears? The trees may, perhaps, for a 

 long time, be fruitful and vigorous, if the parent was but slightly 

 unhealthy; but the latent disease still remains, and the whole 

 propagation will, finally, exhibit symptoms of premature decay. 

 The same effects may follow, in case the original tree is not 

 propagated from until it has reached an advanced age, if grafts 

 are then taken from old and unthrifty instead of young and vigor- 

 ous branches. We have no hesitation in saying, that to these 

 two causes are owing the present decayed and miserable state of 

 the fine old varieties in many parts of Europe. This is the 

 more strongly confirmed in our mind, when we recollect that here 

 and there districts are found in England and France, where these 

 old varieties flourish in all their native vigor and beauty. Po- 

 mologists have attempted to account for this by saying, that an en- 

 feebled variety begins to show symptoms of decay and old age 

 soonest in the more northern districts, while in warmer localities the 

 trees may yet remain in a great degree flourishing. It happens, 

 most unfortunately for this opinion, that some of the fine pears, 

 which have now become quite worthless in the mild climate of 

 Paris and its environs, are yet very fair and fruitful in some of 

 the colder counties of England. 



We regret to perceive that in the neighborhood of Boston, 

 either from the causes here mentioned, or from the vigorous in- 

 fluence of the sea-breezes in that neighborhood, the same dete- 

 rioration of the old varieties of fruit is apparent, which is so 

 much the matter of complaint abroad. The horticulturists there 



