Native Fruits. 291 



NATIVE FRUITS. 



Are not horticulturists to blame, that, while Nature has spread out over 

 our wide extent of territory such a variety of fruits in their wild state, they 

 have not devoted more attention to their improvement and cultivation ? 

 The fruits of our forest open a wide field, asking their attention. Is the 

 native crab less likely to produce a new race of apples than the foreign 

 wild crab, from which it is said all our luscious apples have sprung ? I 

 have seen accidental sports from it that were four times as large as they 

 grow ordinarily, and vastly improved in flavor. The peach is said to have 

 been improved from the bitter almond, which is not only bitter and unpal- 

 atable, but is poisonous. Is it not possible that the black walnut ( Juglans 

 nigra) may yet produce a fruit superior in size and equal in flavor to the 

 peach ? The butternut {J. cinerea) and hickory-nut {Carya alba) may also 

 be the parents of similar fruits. 



As Utopian as this seems, it is not inconsistent with the theory of Van 

 Mons, who devoted a long life to the amelioration of fruits. His theory, 

 as stated by Downing, is, that " all fine fruits are artificial products ; the 

 aim of Nature, in a wild state, being only a healthy, vigorous state of the 

 tree, 2LX\d perfect seeds for continuing the species. It is the object of culture, 

 therefore, to subdue or enfeeble this excess of vegetation, to lessen the 

 coarseness of the tree, to diminish the size of the seeds, and to refine the 

 quality and increase the size of the flesh or pulp." 



There is scarcely any variety of wild fruit but what sports, or varies, from 

 its natural state. It is only necessary, according to Van Mons, to take 

 advantage of that state of variation to attain our object. He paid no at- 

 tention to the quality of the fruit, so that it was in a state of variation ; for 

 " seeds taken from recent variations of bad fruit, and reproduced uninter- 

 ruptedly for several generations, will certainly produce good fruit." 



It is not my object now to give minutely the whole of his theory, but 

 only to throw out such hints as may induce our horticulturists to take some 

 steps towards domesticating our wild fruits, which will also lead them to 

 investigate and study this theory. 



