PRODUCTION OF NEW VARIETIES. 37 



appearance of the wood and leaf, he had reason to 

 believe, would be most likely to produce the best 

 fruit. As soon as the first of these bore, he select- 

 ed the best, and planted the seeds. Selections 

 were again made from the first fruit of these, and 

 so on in continued succession, the best and soonest 

 in bearing were uniformly chosen. He thus ob- 

 tained fruit from the eighth generation ; each suc- 

 cessive experiment yielding an improved result on 

 the preceding. At the fourth generation many of 

 the fruits were good, several excellent, but a smaller 

 number still bad. He had, in the early part of this 

 series of experiments, no less than eighty thousand 

 trees ; hence in selecting from so large a number, 

 his chance for fine ones was vastly greater than 

 from a small collection ; and hence too the reason 

 why, after seven or eight improving generations, 

 he had obtained so many hundred fine sorts. In 

 the early stages of his operations, he found " that 

 twelve or fifteen years was the mean term of time, 

 from the moment of planting the first seed of an 

 ancient variety of the domestic pear, to the first 

 fructification of the trees which sprung from them. 

 The trees from the second sowing, yielded their 

 first fruit at an age of from ten to twelve years; 

 those of the third generation, at an age of from 

 eight to ten years ; those of the fourth generation, 

 at an age of from six to eight; and those of the 

 fifth generation at the age of six years. Van Mons, 



