T 



Published by John B. Russell, at the corner of Congrcas and Lindall Streets. Thomas G. Fes 



VOL. n 



BOSTON, FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 1826. 



SENDEN, Editor. 



NO. 49. 



ORIGINAL PAPERS. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



DURABILITY OF FRUITS. 



Mr Fessenden — In your paper of the 16th 

 instant (No. 47,) you have introduced some further 

 observations of the writer in the Essex Register, 

 on the durability of fruit trees, in opposition to Mr 

 Knight's theory, thai each variety of the apple and 

 pear has its youth, maturiiy, and decay from old 

 age — the correctness of which that writer contin- 

 ues roundly to deny. 



In a former communication, I stated from Mr 

 Knig-ht and another distinguished English author 

 (Marshall) that in the great cider counties in Eng- 

 land, it had been found impracticable to continue 

 the old fruits which had been in the highest esti- 

 mation for a century and more, and given celebrity 

 to their cider and perry : that Mr Knigiit himself, 

 anxious to preserve those fruits, tried many ingen- 

 ious experiments for that purpose, but that all had 

 failed : that such being the /ac/, he, an enlighten- 

 ed naturalist, sought for the cause of the failure : 

 ;ind as it was the old varieties which tlius failed, 

 while neic ones were productive of fruit, he infer 

 red, and certainly with s\ifficient reason to justify 

 the hypotlicsis, that their failure was owing to the 

 decrepitude of old age. Such is Mr Kniglit's theo- 

 ry : which the Essex Register writer has ventur- 

 ed to pronounce " mischievous and false." He 

 now says, " it was not the facts hut the hypothesis 

 to explain them which he denied." lie admitsthe 

 facts stated "by Mr Knight to be true ; but says 

 they " are to be explained in a satisfactory man- 

 ner without adopting the strange hypothesis of Mr 

 Knight which does not explain them." But does 

 not the fact just mentioned, of the success of neio 

 varieties under the same circumstances in which 

 the old ones have long failed, afford a natural and 

 satisfactory explanation ? — And what now is the 

 explanation of this confident writer .' Why " that 

 from the commencement of the present century up 

 10 1818, a succession of cold rainy seasons was 

 experienced in England ; and that since 1818, the 

 .succession of seasons has been dry and warm. — 

 Under the cold and rainy seasons, the apple and 

 pear trees in England became diseased ; but as 

 soon as the propitious weather became continual, 

 the trees which were in the 'last stage of decay,' 

 put on their old healthy appearance, and became 

 as productive and flourishing as ever." This bold 

 assertion, without proof, it is not necessary for 7ne 

 to say, is utterly unfounded. Mr Knight (whose 

 competency to judge and whose weight of charac- 

 acter entitles him to the highest credit) shall speak 

 for himself. 



In a letter so lately written as February 28th, 

 1824, to the Secretary of the London Horticultu- 

 ral Society (of which it will be remembered that 

 Mr Knight is the President) Mr Knight says : 



" The fact, that certain varieties of some species 

 of fruits which have been long cultivated cannot 

 now be made to grow in the same soils, and under 

 the same mode of management, which was a cen- 

 tury ago perfectly successful, is placed beyond the 

 reach of controversy. Every experiment which 

 seemed to afford the slightest prospect of success, 



was tried by myself and others, to propagate the 

 old varieties of the Apple and Pear, which former- 

 ly constituted the orchards of Herefordshire, with- 

 out a single healthy or efficient tree having been 

 obtained ; and, I believe, all attempts to propagate 

 tljose varieties have, during many years, wholly 

 ceased to be made." 



To the pretence that a succession cf unfrvoitrable 

 seaso7is in England caused the failure 'of the old 

 fruits, take the following answer of Mr Knight, in 

 the same letter. He says — 



"It has been urged against tlie conclusion that 

 old age is the cause of debility and decay of those 

 varieties of fruit wliich have been long cultivated, 

 that many of the seedling offspring of such varie- 

 ties are as much diseased as their parents ; and it 

 is contended, that the failure of our best old vari- 

 eties of fruit has arisen from a succession of unfa- 

 vourible seasons. The fact, tliat many of tlie 

 seedling offspring of old diseased varieties of fruit 

 are as much diseased as the parents from which 

 they spring, is unquestionable ; but this,I conceive, 

 proves nothing more than that diseases are hered- 

 itary in the vegetable as they are in the animal 

 world; and it is scarcely reasonable to expect 

 that Ir-althy and robust offspring can be obtained 

 from parents whose lives have been extended be- 

 yond tlicir natural periods by preternatural means, 

 and whose bodies arc yearly falling to pieces un- 

 der the operation of disease : and in which the 

 whole 0/ the circulating fluids are in a morbid 

 statu — If a deterioration have taken place in our 

 climate, and this have occasioned the decay of our 

 fruit trets, — at what period did this deterioration 

 take plate ? It is more than forty years since I 

 commenced experiments with the hope of being 

 able to rais- healthy trees of the old varieties of 

 the cider friits of Herefordshire ; and I know that 

 the progressive debility of those had been pointed 

 out some ysars before my birth* by my father, 

 who died an old man when I was an infant ; and 

 who was an extremely competent judge of the 

 subject. — That some change may, however, have 

 taken place in our climate, owing to the operation 

 of many concurrent causes, is not improbable, but 

 not in a degree equivalent to the effects produced. 

 Any considerable change of climate must also have 

 affected alike the new and the old varieties of 

 fruits, and the decay of the latter alone seems 

 therefore to prove some constitutional change to 

 have taken place in //to5e."t 



These observations of Mr Knight's I presume 

 will be satisfactory to every mind open to convic- 

 tion, of the reasonableness — indeed of the <ratt — 

 of his theory ; and of the groundlessness of the 

 assertion of the Essex Register writer. That un- 

 favourable seasons for the first 18 years of the 

 present century have alone caused the disease and 

 decay of the old fruit trees. — Besides Mr Knight's 

 experiments, made 20 years before the commence- 

 ment of the present century, which suggested to 

 him the theory he has advanced to solve the phe- 

 nomenon in question, Mr Marshall wrote his state- 



ment of the fact of the incurable faikire of tne old 

 iruit5, a dozen years prior to the year 1801, and it 

 appeared then not to be a novelty, but of confirm- 

 ed and lamented observation among the orchard- 

 ists of Herefordsliire. 



In my former communications on this subject, I 

 stated cases of the decay of certain old fruits in 

 our ou-n country, to which some observing fanners 

 applied the expressive terms that they were run out. 

 If it were not so, why, for instance, has not the 

 pearmain — a better apple than the Baldwin or any 

 other Massachusetts winter apple nov/ known to 

 me — been propagated as extensively, and brought 

 in plenty to our markets ? 



This, Mr Fessenden, is the last time that I shall 

 trouble you or your readers on this subject — or 

 perhaps on any other branch of husbandry. I 

 have written now, not to convince the Essex Reg- 

 ister writer — that may be deemed a hopeless task 

 — but to prevent an undue impression, by the per- 

 severing confidence of his assertions, on the minds 

 of any practical farmers, whose interest it is to 

 discover the truth in whatever may affect their 

 operations. 



In your same number 47, you present your read- 

 ers with the candid statement given by Gorham 

 Parsons, Esq. of his Golden Pippins. This case 

 is like that of the English Styre apple, successful- 

 ly cultivated by Mr Coxe, in New Jersey ; of 

 which I took notice in one of my former communi- 

 cations, as corre.aponding with Mr Knight's own 

 anticipations of the effect of a warm climate com- 

 pared with that of England. 

 Salem, June 24, 1826. T. PICKERING. 



* Mr Knig^ht is now nearly eighty years okl. 



t It is hut a few days since I met with this letter of 

 Mr Knijht's, mentioned to be taken from vol. v. part 

 iv. of the Transactions of the London Horticultural So- 

 ' ioty. It was in an English work, entitled The Philo- 

 sophical Magazine k Journal, vol. LXIV. 



MOON'S INFLUENCE. 



P'rie.nd Fessenden — I observed in a late num- 

 ber of the New England Farmer a question respect- 

 ing the Moon's haring any influence on the flow 

 of sap. In answer to which, I would remark that 

 forty years' experience has placed it beyond a 

 doubt in my mind that it is the case ; and it is ob- 

 served by many others ; namely, manufacturers of 

 maple sugar and peelers of bark — We are gener- 

 ally in the practice of tapping trees about the 

 change of the moon, at which time and at the fi<JI 

 we consider the best — and better any time in the 

 new than the old, if the weather is equally fayour- 

 able. 



POISONOUS CHEESE. 



I also observed in thy last number some remarks 

 upon the poisonous qualities of cheese. I there- 

 fore take the liberty to give it as my opinion, from 

 actual experience, and it is proved to the satisfac- 

 tion of many respectable gentlemen in this vicini- 

 ty, that in many instances the cheese is not ren- 

 dered poisonous by a chemical operation in the 

 curd, as alluded to in thy paper — but by making 

 use of the milk after giving the cows garget root, 

 or a root known by that name amongst us, to effect 

 a cure of the garget. B. TABER. 



Vassalborough (Me.) 5 Mo. 26th, 1836. 



O^It is not impossible that another source of 

 poison in cheese may be found in a practice, which 

 we are informed prevails in some dairies, of suffer- 

 ing milk to stand in lead, brass, or copper vessels: 

 or as suggested by a " JVewton Farmer" in the 

 New England Farmer, page 369 of the current 



