PRODUCING NEW AND EARLY FRUITS. 175 



succeeding winter, detached from the wall, and removed to as great a 

 distance from it, as the pliability of their stems would permit ; and in this 

 situation they remained till their blossoms were so far advanced, in the 

 succeeding spring, as to be in some danger of injury from frost. The 

 branches were then trained to the wall, where every blossom I suffered to 

 remain, soon expanded and produced fruit. This attained in a few 

 months the most perfect state of maturity ; and the seeds afforded plants, 

 which have ripened their fruit very considerably earlier than other trees, 

 which I raised at the same time, from seeds of the same fruit, which had 

 grown in the orchard. In this experiment the fecundation of the blossoms, 

 of each variety, was produced by the farina of another kind ; from which 

 process, I think, I obtained in this, and many similar experiments, ari 

 increased vigour and luxuriance of growth ; but I have no reasons what- 

 ever to think that plants thus generated ripen their fruit earlier than 

 others, which are obtained by the common methods of culture. I must 

 therefore attribute the early maturity of those I have described to the 

 other peculiar circumstances under which the seeds and fruit ripened, 

 from which they sprang. 



I obtained, by the same mode of culture, many new varieties, which are 

 the offspring of the Siberian crab and the richest of our apples, with the 

 intention of affording fruits for the press, which might ripen well in cold 

 and exposed situations. The plants, thus produced, seem perfectly well 

 calculated, in every respect, to answer the object of the experiment, and 

 possess an extraordinary hardiness and luxuriance of growth. The 

 annual shoots of some of them, from newly grafted trees in my nursery, 

 the soil of which is by no means rich, exceeded six feet and a half in 

 height, in the last season ; and their blossoms seem capable of bearing 

 extremely unfavourable weather without injury. In all the preceding 

 experiments some of the new varieties inherited the character of the 

 male, and others of the female parent in the greatest degree ; and of 

 some varieties of fruit (particularly the golden pippin) I obtained a 

 better copy, by introducing the farina into the blossom of another apple, 

 than by sowing their own seeds ; I sent a new variety (the Downton 

 pippin) which was thus obtained from the farina of the golden pippin, to 

 the Horticultural Society, last year ; but those specimens afforded but a 

 very unfavourable sample of it ; for the season, and the situation in which 

 the fruit ripened, were very cold, and almost every leaf of the trees had 

 been eaten off by insects. In a favourable season and situation it will, I 

 believe, be found little, if at all, inferior, to the golden pippin, when first 



