:iOO 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



[April 14 



tine, iic. Sic. but of all the pears, he mentions 

 the Crnstamine as the most delicate and agree- j 

 ahle ; next to that, the Falernian pear was es-] 

 teemed, and so called from the abundance of 

 juice it pcjiduced," &c. 



As soon as the Romans had made themselves 

 masters of Britain, they began to clear forests 

 and encourage agriculture. And we cannot 

 doubt lliat they pursued this practice wherever 

 Ihey extended themselves, in Spain, Gaul, and 



From the Esstx Regisler. 



HOPxTICULTURE. 

 We have neither time nor materials to give 

 an elaborate history of the art of grafting. It 

 ivas, however, well understood by the Komaiis. 



Now let me graft my pears, and prune tlie vine, 

 The friiit is tlieirs, tlie labour only mine. — VlRCiI,. 



There are apples, says Pliny, that have en- 

 nobled the countries from vyhence they came, 



and many apples have immortalized their first j Germany, as well as in Britain, and thus spread 

 (ounders and inventors. Our best apples will i 'he favourite fruits of Italy to their conquered 

 honor the first grafters forever; such as took I i'fovinces. When the barbarous ages came on, 

 their names from Mulius, Ceslius, Manlins, and |g:<r'lening retired to the monasteries, and the 

 Claudius. Some apples are so red that they | ''rt of grafting was continued, and the old Iruit-, 

 resemble blood, which is caused by their being j we may suppose, were handed down to us by 

 grafted upon a mulberry stock. I have seen, ( I'li" means. It is thu^ rendered probable that 

 says he, near Thulia-, in the country of the "'e Crustamiiie and Falernian pears, so delicious 

 Tiburtines, a tree grafted with all manner of j I" ">e old Romans, were preserved by the 

 fruits, one bough bearing nuts, another berries, I Monks, aud handed down to us, m company with 

 here hung grapes, there figs, in ono part you j Virgil's Georgics, as the best practical commen- 

 might see pears, in another pomegranates, and, | t'lr.V upon that beautilul poem. Among the va- 

 to conclude, there is no kind of apple, or other: rieiies of our pears, there is one eminently ex- 

 fruit, but there it was to bo found ; but this tree cellent, an.l witli a name, which shows that it 



did not live long. 



tt is impossible to deny a fact which another 

 is said to have witnessed, merely because we 

 have never seen the like, provided there is 

 nothing manife:>tly unnatural or absurd in it. It 

 is too often the case, that we set up our own 

 knowledge as the standard by which to estimate 

 the powers of otiirrs. We know not whether 

 modern tiorticullurists have ever made the at 

 tempt to show how far the art of grafting mav 

 be carried, but, from the different species ol 

 plants which will grow by budding and grafting 

 on each other, there seems to be some founda- 

 tion to believe that the account of Pliny is true. 

 Thus we know that (he almond will grow on 

 the pear stock, lln^ roan tree (pyrus aucuparia) 

 is grafted on the service tree, (P. doiiieslica,) 

 the pear on the hawthorn, the almond on the 

 peach, tlie pear on the quince, the peach on the 

 almond, the peach on ibe plum, iIr? pe.ir on 

 the apple, &,c. How far these comliinations 

 may be made, we have never seen fully staled 



was held in the highest repute. It was even 

 thought worthy to be named alter one of the 

 greatest saints iu the calender. We mean the St 

 Michatfj pear. It iscerlain thai tiuintcnie de- 

 scribes a peir which answers perfectly well to 

 (he description of this delicious variety of iVuit. 

 We unow that the modern scientific inquirers in- 

 to the history of the fruits ot Europe, have not 

 been able to trace ilie origin of the varieties 

 now in existence, beyond the period of two 

 hundred years. But when we recollect that 

 horficultuie, as a science, is (juite of modern 

 date, and that the old gardeners were content 

 with eating their fruit, and cared nothing about 

 df scribing it, it is not to be wondered at that «e 

 cann'it trace any identical fruit further tack 

 than about two hundred years. It by no means 

 follows from this default of knowledge, that our 

 pre>eat varieties are not much older, and it is no 

 extiavagant conjecture, ihat the St Michael pear 

 is one of the varieties which was known to the 

 old Romans. It might have been, for all we 



The Romans were accustomed to convey ! '">o"'i the Crustamine, or the Falernian pear, 



to their native country the natural productions 

 of the conquered nations, and, by careful culti- 

 vation, to make them flourish as well as those 

 indigenous to the climate. Il is probable that 

 after the fall of their empire, the crusaders, who 

 often made that part of the world a rendezvous, 

 observed and acquired a taste for many oflhose 

 varieties ; and brought back to their home, not 

 only new fruits, but those of their native soil, 

 in an improved state. Besides this, the inter- 

 course of the christian priests with Rome, proba- ] 



iiid the actual varieiy which Vjrg.il received 

 fiom Cafu. 



But It is time lo leave the region of conjec- 

 ture, and lo letura to 5Ir Knighl. Tlie advo- 

 cates of his iht-oi V ha»e a most convenient 

 method of evading the force of f.icls which con- 

 trovert their ibeury. Thus, if v\a bring for- 

 ward examples of vigorous grafted trees, the 

 gr.il'ts of which were taken from an apple tree 

 one hundred and ninety nine years of age, they 

 reply wait one year longer, and then the two 



ly served to introduce'other fruits, as the catho- j hundred yeais, which is the lease ol the lile of 

 ic religion, enjoinins; I'requent abstinence from ! 'I'e parent slock, will be completed, and then 

 animal food, must have increased the demand ^ you will seethe theory verified. And if such 



a tree should not decay at the end of two ceii 



for fruits. The monastic buildings a|,jiear to 

 have been almost the only dwellings to which 

 orchards and vineyards were attached, previ- 

 ously to the reign of Henry VUl." 



"Virgil speaks n( pears which he hail from 

 Cato ; and Columella menlions a consider. ible 

 variety of pear-'. Pliny writes of them in his 

 15th book, ch. 2, as being then exceedingly nu- 

 merous in Italy. " Some have," says he, "no 

 other name than the country from whence they 

 came, as the Syrian, the Alexandrine, the Nu- 

 midian. the Grecian, the Piceutine, the Numan- 



turies, they have only to go back a hundred 

 i years more, and say, that the tree will not de- 

 cay till that period is accomplished. If we re- 

 fer to |>car trees, ihcy have a still greater range 

 of time to play upon, and thus'they may go on. 

 evailiiig the force of facts, till the tree Is as old 

 as .Mt ihnselah, nine hundred and sixty nine 

 years, and then i^ diej, and all its progeny died 

 also. 



As strange as this may appear. Ibis is precise- 

 ly tlie mode in which we are dealt with. The 

 example we brought of the old Endicott lre». 



has been answered by the writer in the pHrmer, 

 precisely in this way. We can bring forward 

 another fact, known to ourselves, but it will be 

 equally unavailing lo those whose prejudices ia 

 favour of Mr linighl's theory are so strong as to 

 overcome the most incontrovertible facts, which 

 we shall, by and by, bring forward. We shall 

 beg leave to say, however, that there is a tree 

 growing in a garden in Salem, whose hislorv 

 goes back as far as one hundred and ninety 

 I years. This tree, a Bergamot. is in the last 

 I stage of decay. There is all the appearance of 

 : that nildlitij nf vegelatluii which Mr Thacher 

 ; requires, and yet, grafts taken from that free 

 'are in a most flourishing state, and promise to 

 j live two hundred years longer. One of these 

 j grafts is in a most productive and thriving con- 

 dilinn, and the other is yet young, but has not 

 the least appearance of the decay of the origin- 

 al or parent stock. .Ml this, however, goes for 

 nothing, with the advocates of .Mr Knight's the- 

 ory. We must wait till the lease of the life of 

 the old tree is run out, and then the grafts nil! 

 die, according to the theory. 



Mr Knight's advocates have another ingeni- 

 ous mode of escaping from the force of facts. — ■ 

 When we take one of the varieties which is 

 said to be "• in the last stage of decay,'' and plant 

 it in a rich and favourable soil, and give it the 

 shelter of a wall, the diseased state soon disap- 

 pears, and the varieiy flourishes as well as ever. 

 But this could never be the case, if the graft 

 depended for its existence upon the diseased and 

 decaying parent stock. Now see how such a 

 fact is dispo.«ed of " All of the same stem or 

 family, [says Bucknal] will lose their existence 

 in vegetation; yet, after the debility of age has 

 aclu.iily taken possession of the variety, and the 

 vital principle is nearly exhausted, a superior 

 care and warmth will keep the varieiy in exist- 

 ence some lime longer.''' [iMr Knight resorts to 

 the same salvo.] "This, he observes, (says 

 Thacher,) is an abstruse subject, very little un- 

 derstood, and requiring at first some degree of 

 faith.^'' W'e confess Ihat this is too great a de- 

 mand upon our credulily. The truth is, this is . 

 only a prop to the filling system. A theory roust 

 be consistent — and it must explain all the phe- 

 nomena. We must not have cycles and epicy- 

 rles ad libitum, hero a little and there a little. If 

 Knight was to bring forward his whole " thous- 

 and instance?," two or three of which, howev- 

 er, he has only brought forward, and if we on 

 the other side, can only show that one of his in- 

 stances fails to confoim to the requisites of the 

 theory, the whole of the remaining nine hund- 

 red and ninety-nine of his instances must go for 

 nothing. There must be no anomaly, or the 

 theory cannot be true. A man who adopls a false 

 theory, is vciy much like the man who should 

 use a pair of sjjeclacles, with prisms, instead of 

 lenses, to look through ; every thing is seen dis- 

 toited and coloured. 



We shall now introduce the testimony of Mr 



Henry Phillips, F. H. S. "For some years past 



It has been stated by several ingenious writers, 



that many of our best varieties of apples could 



no longer be cultivated with success ; Ihat by 



i length of time they have become degenerated 



j and worn out. Mr Knight, the President of the 



i Horticultural Society, seems to have been the 



first who gave birth to this idea." It has been 



I seen by the quotations we made from Knight's 



