Wbsoetanies: 185 
of which some are of a quality superior to those which France and 
Belgium have heretofore furnished to England and that he is still ex- 
pecting a greater number from many trees which sprang from the 
seeds. The experiments which I desire will have less for their ob- 
ject to obtain new varieties, than to afford positive ideas upon the 
production of fruit trees, upon the difference in the kinds of our fruits, 
and upon the connexions of the cultivated species with the wild spe- 
cies. This subject merits so much the more the attention and in- 
terests of physiologists, and of agriculturalists, inasmuch, as to the 
present time we have nothing satisfactory, or founded upon observa- 
tion. They contribute, at the same time, to multiplying good fruits, 
which are the ornaments of the tables of the rich, and which offer 
each day to the poor, enjoyments within their reach, and in a season 
of want, an invaluable resource. 
The Royal and Central Society of Agriculture, having adopted the 
proposition of M. Jaume Saint-Hilaire, Mirbel Sageret, Soulange 
Bodin, and Vilmorin. 
In its session of the 15th of March, 1832, it approved of the fol- 
lowing prospectus, which was presented, in the name of this commit- 
tee, by the author of this memoir. 
Premium to be awarded in 1848.—To the best memoir founded 
upon experiments, which tend to prove, whether it is true, as the an- 
cient agriculturalists believed, that the seeds and the stones of 
our good fruits, being sown, and yielding young trees, placed at first 
in a nursery, and afterwards transplanted into good earth, produce in 
general, only wild and acid fruits, or whether it happens under these 
circumstances, on the contrary, that the majority are fine fruits resem- 
bling those of the trees, which furnished their seeds, or other va- 
rieties. 
The first prize, the sum of one thousand francs. 
The second prize, a medal of gold with the impression “ Olivier 
de Serves.” 
The third prize, a medal of silver, idem. 
The competitors will make known in their memoirs— 
1. If the fruit from which the seeds have been sown, proceeded, in 
the case of the pear, from a tree grafted upon the same, or on the 
quince; as to the apple, whether upon the same, or upon the paradis; 
as to'the peach, whether upon the prune, or the almond, or even up- 
on a tree, which never before had been ingrafted. 
Vout. XXVI.—No. 1. 24 
