mid Kitchen-Garden. 581 



time, and accident ; and, being so produced, can only by art 

 be continued. Hence the two great operations for procuring 

 and perpetuating impi'oved varieties of fruits are, amelioration 

 and propagation. 



Amelioration " consists either in acquiring new or improved 

 varieties of fruit, or in increasing their good qualities when 

 acquired. . . . There is in all beings a disposition to deviate 

 from their original nature when cultivated, or even in a wild 

 state. But this disposition is so strong in some as to render 

 them particularly well adapted to become subject to domes- 

 tication : for instance, the dog, the pigeon, and the barn-yard 

 fowl, are cases in which this tendency is most strongly marked 

 in animals; and domesticated fruits are a parallel case in the 

 vegetable world. 



" Cultivators increase this disposition chieuy in two ways : 

 either by constantly selecting the finest existing varieties for 

 seed, or by intermixing the pollen and stigma of two varieties 

 for the purpose of procuring something of an intermediate 

 nature. . , . The power of obtaining cross-bred varieties at 

 pleasure has only existed since the discovery of sexes in plants. 

 In selecting seed from the finest existing varieties, we should, 

 moreover, take care to select it from the handsomest, largest, 

 and most perfectly ripened specimens of those varieties : for 

 " a seedling plant will always partake, more or less, of the 

 character of its parent, the qualities of which are concentrated 

 in the embryo when it has arrived at full maturity. . . . Now, 

 if the general qualities of a given variety are concentrated in the 

 embryo under any circumstances, it is reasonable to suppose 

 that they will be most especially concentrated in a seed taken 

 from that part of a tree in which its peculiar good qualities 

 reside in the highest degree. For instance, in the fruit of an 

 apple growing upon a north wall there is a smaller formation 

 of sugar than in the same variety growing on a south wall ; 

 and it can be easily understood that the seed of that fruit, 

 which is itself least capable of forming saccharine secretions, 

 will acquire from its parent a less power of the same nature 

 than if it had been formed within a fruit in which the sac- 

 charine principle was abundant. It should, therefore, be 

 always an object with a gardener, in selecting a variety to be- 

 come the parent of a new sort, to stimulate that variety by 

 every means in his power to produce the largest and most 

 fully ripened fruit that it is capable of bearing. The im- 

 portance of doing this is well known in regard to melons and 

 cucumbers, and also in preserving fugitive varieties of flowers ; 

 but it is not generally practised in raising fruit trees." 



Cross-bred Va7'ieties. — "The power of procuring inter-* 

 p p 3 



