5i2 FRUIT TKEES. 



llie original tree shall have been completed, will cease to exist. 

 Age alone, according to Van Mons, causes our fruit trees to de- 

 teriorate, and their seeds to degenerate. Seed, he says, which 

 are yielded by the hundredth fruclificatioa of a domesticated 

 pear of excellent quality, produce a great variety of trees, whose 

 fruits, almost always detestable, are more or less near to a wild 

 state. Seedling trees, with us, have generally been the offspring 

 of old varieties ; hence they have seldom produced good fruit. 

 Whoever, therefore, may possess young seedlings which 

 produce good fruit, would confer a great favor on the community 

 by preserving the seed for planting. It has been ascertained 

 ti)at it is advantageous to collect the fruit a little before it is ripe, 

 and leave it to become perfectly mellow and reach a state of 

 decay, before extracting the seeds or stones for planting. The 

 apple is said to deteriorate less rapidly, and to live longer than 

 the pear. 



The subject of deterioration naturally leads us to inquire how 

 many years a variety of pear may live. Van Mons estimates 

 that it may live from two to three hundred years. But I have 

 remarked, he says, that the most excellent, beyond all others, 

 least resist the ravages of old age. They cannot attain the age 

 of half a century, without manifesting symptoms of decrepitude. 

 The first of these syaqjtoms is that of bearing less constantly 

 and the fruit ripening later. The decay of the wood, and the 

 loss of the beautiful form of the tree, and the alteration of the 

 fruit, follow at much later periods. The varieties that have 

 existed but half a century, do not suffer from canker at the ends 

 of the branches, nor from diseases of the bark ; the fruit does not 

 crack, nor is it filled with a hard substance, covered with knots, 

 nor insipid or dry. These varieties can still be grafted on other 

 trees, without their infirmities being augmented. It requires 

 half a century more to render them worthless. It is painful to 

 think that soon the St. Germain, the Beurre Gris, the Crassanne, 

 the Colmar, and the St. Michaels, must submit to this destruc- 

 tion. None of these varieties succeed any longer in Belgiuni, 

 except when engrafted on a thorn, and as espaliers, trained 

 against a wall ; but this success is at the expense of their com- 

 mendable (jualities. 



