HISTOEY OF THE APPLE. 43 



assumes, the first apples that were produced from seeds 

 brought over by the early emigrants, yielded inferior 

 fruit, which had run b:ick toward the wild state, and the 

 people were forced to begin again with them, and that 

 they most naturally pursued this very plan, taking seeds 

 from the improving varieties for the next generations and 

 so on. This may have been so, but it is mere assumption 

 we have no proof, and, on the contrary, our choice va- 

 rieties have so generally been conceded to have been 

 chance seedlings, that there appears little evidence to 

 support it on the contrary, some very fine varieties have 

 been produced by selecting the seeds of good sorts pro- 

 miscuously, and without regarding the age of the trees 

 from which the fruit was taken. Mr. Downing himself, 

 after telling us that we have much encouragement to ex- 

 periment upon this plan of perfecting fruits, by taking 

 seeds from such as are not quite ripe, gathered from a 

 seedling of promising quality, from a healthy young tree 

 (quite young,) on its own root, not grafted, and that we 

 "must avoid 1st, the seeds of old trees; 2d, those of 

 grafted trees ; 3d, that we must have the best grounds for 

 good results " still admits what we all know, that " in 

 this country, new varieties of rare excellence are some- 

 times obtained at once by planting the seeds of old grafted 

 varieties ; thus the Lawrence Favorite and the Columbia 

 Plums were raised from seeds of the Green Gage, one of 

 the oldest European varieties." 



Let us now look at an absolute experiment conducted 

 avowedly upon the Van Mons plan in our own country, 

 upon the fertile soil of the State of Illinois, and see to 

 what results it led : 



