1836.] 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



231 



which his Nursery of Fidelity was located was 

 decided to be indispensable for streets and building 

 lots, and he was siuiinioned to vacate it in the 

 short space of two months, under the penalty of 

 seeing all his trees cut down and thrown into the 

 fire. °Such an injunction would have been lata! to 

 nianj' persons, other than such a man as Mr. Van 

 Mons; he was sensibly allected, but not frustrated; 

 his noble character, his prolbund knowledge^ ol' 

 men enabled him to surmount this reverse of for- 

 tune and disposed him calmly to seek elsewhere, 

 another place (or his establishment. As professor 

 in the University of Louvain, he resolved to trans- 

 port his nursery to that city, that he might have it 

 under his management, without leaving the Uni- 

 versity; but the period assigned lor evacuating the 

 land was unlortunately, that of mid winter, — from 

 the first of November to the last of December. 

 Mr. Van Mons had at his disposal, only a part 

 of Saturday and Sunday in each week, when he 

 could go to Brussels; to collect the scions, to mark 

 the most precious trees and give the requisite or- 

 ders for the others, was all that he could do him- 

 self: and another garden as extensive as that 

 which he evacuated, was required for the recep- 

 tion of his trees. His loss was consequently great 

 and irreparable, from the unfortunate position in 

 which he was placed, being obliged to confide 

 nearly the whole of the care and labor of removal, to 

 persons not well qualified, and who were incapable 

 of comprehending the deep interest which he fi-;lt 

 lor the preservadon of his trees. It was with 

 great difficulty that he saved a twentieth part of 

 his nursery, and this twentieth consisted only of 

 scions for grafting. The remainder were sold or 

 given to whoever would take them. After such 

 a catastrophe Mr. Van Mons considered it neces- 

 sary to guard against being ever again exposed to 

 such a calamity. But incapable of distrust, he 

 hired a piece of land in Louvain, which unfortu- 

 nately belonged to the city, as a receptacle for the 

 ruins of his tmrsery at Brussels, and continued his 

 sowings and experiments. 



Except, having a great number of young plants 

 broken down and drawn out of the ground, by the 

 masses of ice which were left on the ground for 

 several days, after a great freshet in the river 

 which passes through Louvain, occasioned by an 

 unusual thaw in 1830, and which overflowed his 

 nursery to the depth of seven or eight feet; if, I 

 say, we except this flood, Mr. Van Mons enjoyed 

 more or less quietly his new location, during thir- 

 teen consecutive years. His correspondence was 

 renewed and extended, his losses were replaced by 

 new acquisitions, the mass of his observations 

 were augmented, and he continued to introduce 

 into his nursery good new fruits, obtained by other 

 amateurs, such as Messrs Coloma, Capiaumont, 

 D'Hardenpont, the Abbe Duquesne, Gossart, 

 Wirthum, Derlenfcourt, Did, Liart, Knight, and 

 an hundred others, and he distributed scions of 

 these good fruits simultaneously, with those of his 

 own; for his sole end has always been to multiply 

 those which were good, and to enable the whole 

 world to enjoy them. But he never sacrifised an.^ 

 trees raised from the seeds, to receive the scions 

 which were sent to him li'om all quarters — even 

 from North America, before the chavacter of its 

 fruit had been decided: he therefore annually pur- 

 chased stocks lor the reception of the grafts, which 

 were sent to him and for [irescrving his own vari- 



eties, that he might more liberally disseminate 

 them. For this purpose, he adopted, in his nur- 

 sery at Brussels, a kind of grafting which he calks 

 graft by copulation, and he continues to practise it 

 at ijouvain with great success. 



Until 1823 Mr.' Van INlons had not distributed 

 any of his trees or scions, without numbers being 

 attached to them, which corresponded with simi- 

 5ar numbers affixed to the parent-stocks in his 

 nursery, that enabled him to answer all the quer- 

 ies which might be addressed to him, by the per- 

 sons to whom he sent scions. At this period, hav- 

 ing been confined to his bed by a severe wound, 

 he compiled from his registers and published a 

 catalogne, in which we find about 2000 varieties 

 of fruits, in which the names are placed opposite 

 the numbers of those fi'om which scions had been 

 taken and distributed, makes known the principle 

 of his theory, describes some of the details of his 

 culture and his manner of making experiments: 

 there are also in it some remarks on the causes 

 which compelled him to abandon his nursery at 

 Brussels. There arc several things worthy of at- 

 tention in this catalogue; first, the interruptions in 

 the series of numbers; for example, in the second 

 series we find number 850 immediately after 840, 

 which indicates that nine intermediate numbers 

 were attached to nine trees of llivorable augury, 

 but whose fruit had not j'ct been decided upon as 

 to quality : second, the names followed by the 

 words by its naturally indicate that the varieties 

 thus designated have been produced from the 

 seeds by Van INIons; third, when the name is fol- 

 lowed by the words by its patron, they indicate that 

 the name of the variety is that of the person who 

 has obtained it fi'om the seed. But there is one 

 very important thing which Mr. Van Mons did 

 not think of, and which would have been very 

 usefijl in the history of fruit trees, especially to as- 

 certain the course and progress of their deteriora- 

 tion, this was, to have fixed the year of the birth 

 of each of the new varieties, designated in his cat- 

 alogue. Mr. Van Mons was alone capable of do- 

 ing it : when I spoke to him about it, he replied 

 that his intention had not been to establish a sci- 

 ence, but rather to do a good act. which would be 

 immediately useful by the dissemination of good 

 fruits; still he regrets having left this hiatus, which 

 his notes do not now enable him entirely to fill 

 up. 



As I have before stated, Mr. Van Mons enjoyed 

 his fifty years of experiments, in enriching us 

 with good excellent fi-uits; but pithlic utility had 

 sworn that she would finally embitter his old age. 

 In 1831 we besieged the citadel D'Anvers, and 

 although Mr. Van Mons nursery was fourteen 

 leagues distant from the army, the engineers 

 could not find a more commodious place than that 

 nursery, to bake the bread of the soldiers in; con- 

 sequently a great part of Mr. V'an Mon's trees 

 were destroyed, having constructed their ovens on 

 the ground where they grew, and the fruit of the 

 others tvas exposed to pillage. Still the philoso- 

 phy of Mr. Van Mons sustained him in this unex- 

 pected devastation; he hired two other tracts of 

 land, into which he removed his young plants of 

 the seventh, eighth and ninth uninterrupted gen- 

 eration, from parent to son; he was consoled be- 

 cause he had time to collect, although it was in 

 the summer, scions of the trees which were sacri- 

 ficed to afford a place for the erection of ovens; 



