CHAPTER V. 



CHANGES WROUGHT IN FRUITS BY EXTERNAL CAUSES. 



THE importance of attention to the variation in fruit 

 wrought by a change in climate, soil, and cultivation, 

 appears to be much underrated. While the peculiar or 

 essential character of a variety remains unchanged, the 

 quality, or degree of excellence, is variously modified. 

 This is sometimes so great that serious disappointment 

 results ; and high expectations, caused by success in one 

 case, are defeated by different circumstances in another. 

 Hence the necessity of understanding these modifying 

 influences. 



The changes produced by climate, are greater in some 

 classes of fruits than in others. The cherry varies but 

 little in character and quality ; the fine varieties originated 

 by Thomas Andrew Knight near London, are also among 

 the finest when removed to the northern states of America. 

 This may be owing in part to their period of maturity, 

 which, occurring early in summer, could not be influenced 

 oy the length of the seasons. But with the apple, pear, and 

 peach, the case is quite otherwise. Very few of the whole 

 British catalogue of apples, are first in quality here. The 

 White Astracan, an apple of high reputation in Russia, 

 becomes very inferior in England; and a similar loss takes 

 place on the removal to England of some of the finest 

 apples of Italy. Some of the best peaches in the neighbor- 

 hood of Philadelphia, become second or third rate in 

 western New York, the shorter and cooler summers of the 

 .alter region not being sufficient to give full flavor to many 

 of the more southern varieties. American peaches taken 

 to England lose still more. Of fifty sorts, from the middle 

 and western states, tested at the great Chiswick garden, all 

 but two were pronounced " worthless." 



