FRUIT GARDEN. 219 



In choosing between so many varieties, old and 

 young, though disappointment would perhaps be 

 impossible, still selection might not be easy ; and 

 in this view it may not be amiss to furnish the 

 reader with a short list, in a tabular form, of those 

 sorts which stand highest in horticultural estima- 

 tion, for the hardness and productiveness of the 

 tree, the excellence of the fruit, and the variety of 

 uses to which this may be applied.* (See next page.) 



It was perhaps a comparison between modern 

 and ancient lists which first suggested the idea that 

 " the varieties of the apple-tree have but a limited 

 duration, and that they disappear by whole races." 

 The Moil, the Redstreak, the Musts and the Golden 

 Pippin, the Stire and the Fox Whelp, according to 

 the observations of Knight,f are rapidly declining ; 

 and some recent facts warrant us in the belief that 

 our own Spitzenberg is fast hastening to its end. 



Before the discovery of this law of nature, little, 

 if any, attention was given to the propagation of 

 the apple-tree by modes other than those which 

 perpetuate a favourite race ; and hence it was that 

 scions, buds, layers, and cuttings, were long and ex- 

 clusively employed. But this practice is now con- 

 siderably qualified, and many horticulturists and am- 

 ateurs are engaged in producing new varieties from 

 the seeds, and from a commixture of the farinas of 

 sorts whose merits are already established. J Of 



* Such has been the improvement in the apple, that not more 

 than one half of these varieties would now be ranked in the first 

 class of fruit. J. B. 



t Treatise on Apple and Pear Trees, p. 15. 



j The credit of this discovery is due to Mr. Knight, the dis- 

 tinguished president of the Horticultural Society of London. 

 On this point, however, there are skeptics, and of considerable 

 name. Williamson and Speechley consider the deterioration of 

 the apple-tree as accidental, not uniform ; as the temporary ef- 

 fect of weather, not that of a settled law of nature ; and, there- 

 fore, that " genial summers will restore to old trees their ordi- 

 nary health and duration." Hort. Trans., vol. iii., p. 291 ; and 

 Hints, p. 188. 



