312 Retrospectioe Criiicism. 



whose ravages are prevented by high cultivation, and thinning of fruit, for 

 it is well known that many insects will rarely attack thrifty shoots and fruit, 

 and during a season of rapid vegetation and poor fruit crops, many of our Vir- 

 gouleuse pears were fine and sound. The same appearance of disease was 

 shown some years since among our Newtown pippins, which the author's 

 brother informed us also appeared among their own. We immediately cul- 

 tivated and manured the orchard very highly, and the year after were re- 

 warded with perfectly sound apples of unusual size and fine flavor. I have 

 not heard that this appearance of disease has disappeared from the Hudson 

 River, but am convinced that high cultivation would effect that object. As 

 the author observes, every fruit has its locality, and may be often inferior 

 elsewhere, as the peach is attacked by insects and disease in New Jersey, 

 while it is free from them in more southern States. We think we have sat- 

 isfactorily shewn, however, that these casualties are owing neither to soil 

 or climate, for we have every variety of the former, and the latter has but 

 little influence. They are owing to some of those inexplicable causes 

 which still puzzle the best vegetable physiologists. 



The author goes on to state that on the seaboard pears are propagated on 

 unhealthy stocks. If he had visited our own nursery, or that of Hovey & 

 Co.,* he would have discovered that healthy imported pear stocks from the 

 wild seed are uniformly used, and that suckers are entirely discarded. 

 They may be also discarded in the interior, but we recollect some two years 

 since seeing some pears on suckers which Hovey & Co. had obtained from 

 an inland nursery, of the appearance of which, we do not wish to speak. 

 Respecting the peach, it is always our custom to obtain the stones from 

 those parts of the South not materially affected by disease, and also to inoc- 

 ulate the peach, apricot, and nectarine, on the healthy stocks of a wild 

 plum, on which they are more hardy and longer lived. 



The author also quotes a cultivator from Ohio, to prove that one tree 

 taken from the seacoast soon decayed, while another from the interior, and 

 by implication from the Highland Botanic Garden, preserved its good quali- 

 ties. We do not wish to call in question any of the author"s/flc/s unne- 

 cessarily, but cannot avoid thinking that if such is the case, it is somewhat 

 singular that nurserymen from Ohio and Kentucky, and some from Orange 

 County, N. Y., men too of knowledge and experience, after examining all 

 the principal inland nurseries, have for years purchased, and continue to 

 purchase, of the Long Island nurseries. I need say but little when knowl- 

 edge and experience thus manifest their judgment. As all the author's 

 statements are founded upon his estimate of the quality of seaboard soil, 

 which estimate it is in our power to prove totally erroneous, w§ trust that 

 the error of those statements will be fully manifest. We have stated we 

 possessed every variety of soil ; that we know of no pears having the ap- 

 pearance of disease here, excepting the Virgouleuse and St. Germain, our 

 stock of the former of which is only from buds furnished us by the author 

 some years since ; that the Newtown pippin was sound and good here, 



[* Messrs. H. it Co. raised nearly 100,000 seedling pear stocks last year. — Ed.] 



