184 MMiscellanies. 
have not found any thing positive, or satisfactory. One fact like that 
which we offer, in the nursery of M. Sageret, is not able to over- 
throw, at once, a theory founded upon such a weight of opinion, but 
it seems to merit the attention of nurserymen the more, as this theo- 
ry has been prejudicial to the perfection of our fruits; because, once 
admitted, we cease to make experiments, and to wait the result du- 
ring fifteen years. I think then that the Royal and Central Agricul- 
tural Society ought to promote some experiments upon the produce 
of the seeds of our best fruits, by proposing a prize, which will be 
awarded in fifteen years, and which shall have for its object to know 
whether it is true, that the grains of the best fruits sown in a proper 
soil, yielding young trees, placed at first ina nursery, afterwards 
transplanted into good land, produce in a majority of cases, acid and 
degenerate fruits, as all ancient agriculturalists have supposed. I 
believe that transplantation is necessary, in order to ameliorate the 
fruits of trees proceeding from the seeds, seeing that all vegetables 
select in the earth, the moisture proper to their particular nature, 
and that they exhaust the earth in a few years, whence proceeds 
the theory of rotations. When a tree is planted, or a seed sown in 
any land whatever, we have not the means for knowing the elements 
with which they are nourished. It is a stranger that is established 
in the midst of a country, where the native inhabitants are capable of 
living for many years, without exhausting the soil; and although the 
trees, drawing their nourishment from greater depths than the annual 
plants, are Jess difficult than these, it is useful to change them, and 
to offer them an abundant and various nourishment. 
It is objected perhaps, against the utility of transplanting, in order 
to ameliorate the species, that some of our good pears have been 
found wild in the forests where they have never undergone any trans- 
plantation ; but five or six kinds of pears or of apples have come from 
the forests, from some thousands of seeds, of good fruits, scattered 
during many ages, either by birds or hunters, proving only that these 
grains have fallen into a vein of earth so favorable to their particular 
nature that they have not had need of a tender culture, or of trans- 
plantation. In proposing a prize for ascertaining if the ancients have 
deceived themselves upon the products of the seeds of good fruits, 
my opinion was at first founded upon conjecture, which was changed 
into a pobability, since Mr. Knight the President of the Society of 
Horticulture of London has announced that having sown some seeds 
of good pears he has already obtained twelve varieties of new pears 
