208 AMERICAN POMOLOGY. 



Why some should be thus hardy, and others tender, we 

 do not know, but it is not their Northern or Southern ori- 

 gin ; some having the former are most tender. Sad experi- 

 ence has taught us the fact, and since the dreadful win- 

 ters of the past decade, in some parts of the West, the 

 first question asked, respecting a new variety of fruit, is 

 that regarding its hardiness. Pomological societies have 

 endeavored to collate the names of the hardy and tender 

 kinds, and have thus, by their united experience, been en- 

 abled to present lists of a few of the known hardy apples, 

 for the guidance of planters. 



SOILS. It will be proper, in this place, to say something 

 about the soils best adapted to orcharding. *The apple is a 

 gross feeder, but a good-natured one, and, like a good citi- 

 zen and a cosmopolite, it submits to surrounding circum 

 stances. In our own country, it nourishes alike on the gran 

 ite hills of New England, or the mountain ranges stretch- 

 ing thence to the southwest, in the limestone valleys amid 

 these ridges, on the sandstones and shales that form the 

 southeastern rim of the great valley of the West, upon 

 the vast drift formations that overlie the rocks from the 

 tide-waters of the St. Lawrence* to the sources of the Mis- 

 souri, upon the rich diluvial and alluvial deposits of our 

 river bottoms, and our vast prairies. I have said that the 

 apple nourishes alike upon these various soils and under 

 these so different circumstances ; perhaps this expression 

 should be somewhat modified ; there are varieties that ap- 

 pear peculiarly adapted by their nature for all of these 

 different situations ; there are, perhaps, none that will 

 thrive equally well in all. 



The orchardists of each section of the country must as- 



