196 Mr. Humrickhouse' s Explanations 



at Mr Daniel Miller's. Respecting its origin, Mr. Miller in- 

 formed me that his tree was brought from Virginia about forty 

 years ago, and was a sprout taken from a tree in an old or- 

 chard on the south branch of the Potomac ; that it was not 

 a grafted tree, and that they had no grafted fruit in the or- 

 chard, with which he was well acquainted, where the sprout 

 was obtained. I first saw and ate of the fruit in the winter 

 of 1838-9, and grafted nineteen trees of it in 1841. In Jan- 

 uary, 1843, I sent a description of it to Wm. Kenrick, accom- 

 panied with scions. Last spring, I sent scions to yourself, 

 which you have since informed me were growing. 



Mr. Miller and Mrs. Foster called this apple the " White 

 Pippin" and knew it hij no other name. The name of Amer- 

 ican White Winter Calville was first given to it by myself. 

 So you see it cannot be the White Winter Calville of the 

 French, after which I named it, on account of its resemblance 

 to that old variety ; else, in naming, as I thought, a new vari- 

 ety, I unconsciously hit upon its old name with the errone- 

 ous prefix of "American," a thing little likely to take place. 

 It cannot be the same with the French variety, because this 

 apple has been propagated by means of sprouts time out of 

 mind, as I may say ; a thing impossible unless root-grafting 

 had been employed upon the first tree in the series, and 

 that tree had established itself upon its own roots, and threw 

 up sprouts from them to be taken and reared into trees. At 

 the time at which this must have happened, had it happened 

 at all, I believe that root-grafting the apple was not practised; 

 and there was, moreover, little or no grafted fruit of any kind 

 in the part of Virginia from which the family of Mr. Miller 

 removed. Nor would the slightest suspicion now exist of 

 its being the French variety, if I had not unfortunately re- 

 named it. 



My reasons for giving it the new name I believed to be suf- 

 ficient at the time ; they were briefly as follows : — There are so 

 many apples called " Pippin," with various prefixes and adden- 

 da, as to have already brought in great confusion in relation to 

 some of them. The prefix " White" might come at some time to 

 be omitted, since the difference between white, green and straw 

 color, as descriptive of the color of an apple, is often very slight 

 indeed; and we have already "Green Pippins" and "Golden 



