OF FRUIT TREEs>. 17 



in a nursery his own free stocks, and graft for himself, 

 that he may realize all the advantages to be derived 

 from a knowledge of the soil and the peculiar proper- 

 ties of his trees, and thereby avoid many impositions 

 practised by ignorant and artful nursery-men. He 

 wiU moreover be enabled to select such stocks for 

 grafting, as experience shows to be best adapted to the 

 soil and climate of his plantation, and which meet his 

 own particular views. Trees raised from seed rarely 

 produce the same species of fruit with that from which 

 the kernels were taken, yet they are well adapted as 

 stocks for grafting, and it occasionally happens that a 

 new and valuable variety is thus produced, either for 

 cider, or for the dessert. An accurate observer, Mr. 

 Joseph Cooper, of New-Jersey, asserts, (Dom. Ency. 

 Mease's edit.) that experience, for more than fifty 

 years, has convinced him, that, although seedlings 

 from apples will scarcely ever produce fruit exactly 

 similar to the original, yet many of them will produce 

 excellent fruit : some will even be superiour to the 

 apples from which the seeds are taken. This fact has 

 led him to plant seeds from the largest and best kinds 

 of fruit, and from trees of a strong and rapid growth, 

 and let all the young trees bear fruit before grafting, 

 which produce uncommon strong shoots or a large 

 rich-looking leaf. He has seldom known them fail 

 of bearing' fruit having some good quality ; at all e- 

 vents they make a stock to receive the grafts of any 

 good kind which may present itself. Those sprouts 

 or suckers which originate from the roots of ungraft- 

 ed trees, if transplanted, will produce the same kind 

 of fruit with the parent stock, though tr&e^thus prop- 

 agated are very apt to generate suckers, and they do 

 not come to a bearing state so soon by several years 

 as engrafted trees. This was probably the mode of 

 propagating fruit trees before the art of engrafting was 

 discovered. Select fruit may be propagated in the 



