SELECTION FROM YOUNG TREES. 395 



of the cultivated sorts their characteristics have be- 

 come fixed. Yet there are as great specific difi'er- 

 ences between the wild aud cultivated varieties of 

 fruit as between men and the baboon. One might 

 as well argue that all the races of men are develop- 

 ments of the latter, or admit the mutability of 

 species ; and still the abandonment of man to the 

 mere satisfaction of his animal appetites, as is the 

 case with some of the Bushmen of Africa, continued 

 for centuries, produces no more similarity to the 

 baboon in him, than in the tribes elevated above 

 him of his own race. The cultivated fruit, although 

 left to be wild for a generation or two, still never 

 fails to preserve well marked its domesticated char- 

 acter, any more than the wild sorts lose their char- 

 acter under the most accurate culture for generations. 

 Among the millions of seedlings from the wild fruit 

 raised for grafting the pear, we have never heard 

 of the appearance of a desirable sort. 



The seed should always be taken from young 

 trees which are free from disease, so as not to entail 

 upon the seedling any difficulty resulting from 

 decrepitude in the parent tree. As an instance of 

 the importance of securing perfect seed from healthy 

 trees, it is stated by one having great practical 

 knowledge concerning it, that estates in Scotland 

 on which larches are grown, and producing a crop 

 of timber worth ten or twenty thousand pounds, 

 have been ruined by a disease called dry-rot, rend- 



