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 state" Of this, we 

 have here 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 falling 

 back toward the original mazzard. 



Most of our choicest 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 hybridizing. Lindley 

 says : " If the pistils of one species be fertilized by the pollen of an- 

 other species, which may take place in the same genus, or if two 

 distinct varieties of the same species be in like manner intermixed, 

 the seed which results from the operation will be intermediate be- 

 tween its parents, partaking of the qualities of both. In the first 

 case, the progeny is hybrid or male ; in the second, it is simply cross- 

 bred." Although of the same genus, no hybrid has ever yet been 

 created between the apple and the pear, or the gooseberry and cur- 

 rant. These cross-breds, when closely resembling the female 

 parent, are termed sub-varieties. 



This practice of producing new varieties by cross fertilization w r as 

 advocated by Thomas Andrew Knight, a distinguished horticulturist 

 of England : while that of Dr. Van Mons of Belgium, was the re- 

 production of seedlings from seedlings in succession ; selecting each 

 time those of the seedlings to procure the seed, which proved the 

 best in the fruit. At the eighth generation, in growing from the 

 pear, his seedlings produced fruit at four years old, while at the com- 

 mencement it required twelve to fifteen years. This he regarded 

 as the correct course to pursue in the amelioration of varieties ; and 

 to this theory, this fruiting at an early stage, according as the parent 

 is far removed from its original state, may we not attribute much 

 of the habits of many of our pears 1 The Frederic of Wurtemburg, 



(JO) 



