APPENDIX. 705 



But half the ground is not yet covered. How does the theory 

 work in America ? is the most natural inquiry. In this country, 

 we have soil varying from the poorest sand to the richest 

 alluvial, climate varying from frigid to almost torrid — a range 

 wide enough to include all fruit trees between the apple and the 

 orange. 



We answer tnat the facts here, judged in the whole, are de- 

 cidedly against the theory of the extinction of varieties. While 

 here, as abroad, unfavourable soil, climate, or culture, have pro- 

 duced their natural results of a feeble and diseased state of 

 certain sorts of fruit, these are only the exceptions to the 

 general vigour and health of the finest old sorts in the country 

 at large. The oldest known variety of pear is the Autumn 

 Bergamot — beheved by Pomologists to be identically the same 

 fruit cultivated by the Romans in the time of Julius Caesar — 

 that is to say, the variety is nearly two thousand years old. It 

 grows with as much vigour, and bears as regular and abundant 

 crops of fair fine fruit in our own garden, as any sort we culti- 

 vate. Whole orchards of the Doyenne (or Virgalieu) are in 

 the finest and most productive state of bearing in the interior 

 of this State, and numberless instances in the western states — 

 and any one may see, in September, grown in the apparently 

 cold and clayey soil near the town of Hudson, on the North 

 River, specimens of this "outcast," weighing three fourths of a 

 pound, and of a golden fairness and beauty of appearance and 

 lusciousness of flavour worthy of the garden of the Hesperides, — 

 certainly we are confident never surpassed in the lustiest youth 

 of the variety in France. The same is true of all the other 

 sorts when propagated in a healthy manner, and grown in the 

 suitable soil and climate. Wherever the soil is not exhausted 

 of the j^roper elements the fruit is beautiful and good. The 

 largest and finest crops of pears regularly produced in our own 

 gardens, are by a Brown Beurre tree, only too luxuriant and 

 vigorous. Of the Golden Pippin apple, we can point out trees 

 in the valley of the Hudson, productive of the fairest and finest 

 fruit, and the St. Germain Pears grown by a neighbour here, 

 without the least extra care, are so excellent, that he may fairly 

 set them against any one of the newer varieties of Winter fruit. 



On the other hand, we candidly admit that there has been for 

 some time a failure of many sorts of pear and apple in certain 

 parts of the country. All along the sea-coast where the soil is 

 light, and has been exhausted, by long cultivation, of lime, 

 potash, and phosphates, the inorganic elements absolutely 

 necessary to the production of fine pears, many varieties that 

 once flourished well, are now feeble, and the fruit is often 

 blighted.* 



* The symptoms of the decliue or decay iu the pear are chiefly these. 

 The tree appa-entlv healthy in the spring, blossoms, and sets a crop ot 



30* 



