PROPAGATION BY SEEDS. 33 



Preliminary Operations 



may be classed under the heads Propagation, Planting, 

 Training, and Protection of Blossom. 



Propagation hy Seed.. — Although fruit-trees are fur- 

 nished with all the natural means of reproduction, it is 

 not in general, expedient to attempt to propagate them 

 by the sowing of seed. This .method is found to be 

 equally tedious and precarious, requiring the labor of 

 a good many years, and very rarely producing an exact 

 copy of the fruits from which the seeds are taken. The 

 chief reason, of the variation is pretty obvious ; the blos- 

 soms of different varieties of the same species of fruit 

 are commonly expanded, at the same period of time, in 

 the neighborhood of each other, ind the pollen of one 

 kind is thus extremely apt to be transferred, by the 

 agency of bees and other insects, to the stigma of ano- 

 ther kind. If, therefore, we desire to procure unconta- 

 minated seed of an excellent variety, such as the Rib- 

 ston apple, we ought to encircle the blossom-bud with 

 a fine gauze b^g, sufficiently wide to allow the blossom 

 to expand, and not remove the covering till the fruit be 

 fairly set. Another source of variation is to be found 

 in the influence of the stock upon the graft, which is 

 real, though not easily detected, except in extreme-cases 

 (such as grafting Scotch' apples upon stocks of the Rus- 

 s-ian transparent, and finding the former acquiring the 

 transparent character). To obviate this the tree should 

 stand on its own bottom,- or be struck from a cutting. 

 All our present admired' fruits are regarded as seminal 

 varieties obtained from the wild inhabitants of the fo- 

 rests ; they have been trained into an artificial condi- 

 tion, and when sown seem to have a tendency to 

 4 



