OEIGIN^ATING OF VARIETIES. 17 



"The free use of ripe fruits not only pre ve?ifs disease, hut their 

 regulated enjoyment helps to remove that which already exists. All 

 ripe fruits are, also, more or less nutritious. Professor Salisbury 

 has clearly demonstrated that the apple is superior to the potato, 

 in the principles that go to increase the muscle and the brain of man, 

 and in fattening properties, it is nearly equal, when cookedf for swine, 

 or fed raw to other domestic animals." 



Kipe grapes have cured epidemic dysentery. Physicians have, 

 occasionally, advised the use of " cooling acid fruits ;" and the earliest 

 writers have directed the sugary ones, as " figs," for food in conval- 

 escence. Families, where fruits are most plentiful and good, and 

 prized as an article of daily food, are most free from disease of all 

 kinds, and more especially from fevers and "bowel complaints." 

 Most fruits aid digestion, some directly, some indirectly, and lessen 

 the desire for alcoholic or stimulating drinks. The juicy ones act aS 

 "diluents," and all as "diuretics;" the frep acids neutralizing, or 

 rendering soluble the earthy matters in the blood, and carrying them 

 off rapidly through the natural channels. 



CHAPTER II. 



ORIGINATING OF VARIETIES THEIR PROPAGATION, BY BUDDING, 



GRAFTING, LAYERS, CUTTINGS, RUNNERS, AND SUCKERS. 



" Our garden varieties of fruits are not natural forms. They are 

 the artificial productions of culture. Seedlings from them "have 

 always a tendency to improve, but they have also another and a 

 stronger tendency to return to a natural or wild staieP Of this, we 

 have a strong evidence, in the production of seedling cherries by 

 Prof. Kirtland, where from several hundred grown from seed 

 gathered from the same tree, only about one-tenth have surpassed, 

 and two-tenths equaled, the parent ; the remainder mostly failing 

 back toward the original Mazzard. 



Most of our choice varieties cultivated, are from seeds of chance 

 cross-impregnation ; few have been the result of artificial skill and 

 care ; cross breeding and hybridizing are too often confounded, and 

 while we are constantly in the production of new varieties from cross 

 breeding^ none are known in fruits from hyhridizing. Lindley says : 



