Fruits and Fruit Trees of America. 299 



ninety-nine worthless or indifferent apples. It appears to him a lottery, in 

 which there are too many blanks to the prizes. He, therefore, wisely re- 

 sorts to the more certain mode of grafting from well known and esteemed 

 sorts. 



Notwithstanding this, every year, under the influences of garden culture, 

 and often without our design, we find our fruit trees reproducing them- 

 selves ; and occasionally, there springs up a new and delicious sort, whose 

 merits tempt us to fresh trials after perfection. 



To a man who is curious in fruit, the pomologist who views with a more 

 than common eye, the crimson cheek of a peach, the delicate bloom of a 

 plum, or understands the epithets, rich, melting, buttery, as applied to a 

 pear, nothing in the circle of culture, can give more lively and unmixed 

 pleasure, than thus to produce and to create — for it is a sort of creation — 

 an entirely new sort, which he believes will prove handsomer and better 

 than any thing that has gone befoie. And still more, as varieties which 

 originate in a certain soil and climate, are found best adapted to that locality, 

 the production of new sorts of fruit, of high merit, may be looked on as a 

 most valuable, as well as interesting result. 



Beside this, all the fine new fruits, which, of late, figure so conspicuous- 

 ly in the catalogues of the nurseries and fruit gardens, have not been orig- 

 inated at random and by chance efforts. Some of the most distinguished 

 pomologists have devoted years to the subject of the improvement of fruit 

 trees by seeds, and have attained, if not certain results, at least some gen- 

 eral laws, which greatly assist us in this process of amelioration. Let us 

 therefore examine the subject a little more in detail." — pp. 2, 3. 



The author gives an abstract of Van Mons's theory' for 

 producing fruit, but we do not learn whether he fully believes 

 in the correctness of that theory, or in that of cross breeding, 

 now so generally adopted : — 



" All fine fruits are artificial products ; the aim of nature, in a wild state, 

 being only a healthy, vigorous state of the tree, and perfect seeds for con- 

 tinuing the species. It is the object of culture, therefore, to subdue, or en- 

 feeble this excess of vegetation ; to lessen the coarseness of the tree ; to 

 diminish the size of the seeds ; and to refine the quality and increase the 

 size of the flesh or pulp. 



There is always a tendency in our varieties of fruit trees to return by 

 their seeds towards a wild state. 



This tendency is most strongly shown in the seeds borne by old fruit 

 trees. And ' the older the tree is of any cultivated variety of Pear,' says 

 Dr. Van Mons, ' the nearer will the seedlings, raised from it, approach a 

 wild state, without however ever being able to return to that state.' 



On the other hand, the seeds of a young fruit treee of a good sort, being 

 itself in the state of amelioration, have the least tendency to retrograde, 

 and are the most likely to produce improved sorts. 



