20 CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT 



can bear fruit. An apple tree from the seed require? 

 lo be twelve or fifteen years old before it will produce 

 fruit in perfection ; but a method will be hereafter de- 

 scribed by which particular branches may be forced 

 to produce blossoms and fruit at an earlier period, and 

 their quality sooner ascertained. 



The following are the sentiments of Mr. Knight, 

 an experienced English horticulturalist, (Edin. Ency. 

 Amer. edit, article horticulture.) All the extensions, 

 he observes, by means of grafts and buds, must natu- 

 rally partake of the qualities of the original. Where 

 the original is old, there must be inherent in the de- 

 rivatives the tendency to decay incident to old age. 

 It is not to be understood, however, that a graft can- 

 not survive the trunk from which it was taken : this 

 would be deemed absurd. Jt may indeed be assumed 

 as a fact, that a variety or kind of fruit, such as the 

 golden pippin or the ribston, is equivalent only to an 

 individual. By careful management the health and 

 life of this individual may be prolonged : and grafts 

 placed on vigorous stocks and nursed in favourable 

 situations, may long survive the parent plant or orig- 

 inal ungrafted tree. Still there is a progress to ex- 

 tinction, and the only renewal of an individual, the 

 only true reproduction, is by seed. As the production 

 of new varieties of fruit from the seed, is a subject 

 which now very much occupies the attention of hor- 

 ticulturalists, it may be proper here to state the pre- 

 cautions adopted by Mr. Knight and others in con- 

 ducting their trials. It is in the first place a rule to 

 take the seeds of the finest kinds of fruit, and from the 

 ripest, largest and best flavoured specimens of that 

 fruit. When Mr. K. wished to procure some of the 

 old apples in a healthy and renovated state, he adopt- 

 ed the following method : He prepared stocks of the 

 best kind of apple that could be propagated by cut- 

 tings, and planted them against a south wall in a very 



