Transactions of the London Horticultural Society. 87 



blossoms or fruit, till the original tree of that variety has 

 attained its age of puberty ; and under our ordinary modes of 

 propagation by grafts and buds, all [the individual plants of 

 any given variety, as 'we, understand it] become subject, 

 within no very distant period, to the debilities and diseases of 

 old age. It is therefore desirable that the planter should 

 know at what periods of their existence varieties of fruits are 

 most productive and eligible; and by what means (if any 

 exist) the deterioration of valuable varieties may be prevented 

 or retarded." Mr. Knight has been accustomed to consider 

 " that each variety possessed its greatest value in its middle 

 age," but now believes " that, in vegetable as in animal life, 

 the most prolific period is that which immediately succeeds 

 the age of puberty." Out of a good many experiments which 

 led Mr. Knight to this conclusion were these : — From seed- 

 ling pear trees twenty years of age, and which had borne 

 their first fruit in the preceding autumn, he, in July 1828, 

 took from the extremity of their leading branches buds, and 

 inserted them into seedling pear stocks, then only four months 

 old. Many of these budded plants, although not transplanted, 

 nor subjected to any peculiar mode of treatment, produced 

 blossoms abundantly vigorous in the spring of 1831, and con- 

 sequently at but three years from the date of their springing 

 from the ground. Mr. Knight remarks: — "I never pre- 

 viously saw, and I do not think that any other person has 

 seen, in this climate, fruit produced by pear trees at so early 

 an age. I had previously made the same experiment with 

 apple trees, with the same results," Mr. Knight laid some 

 branches of a plum tree, which had not attained the age of 

 puberty, which (as he expected) freely emitted roots ; but he 

 found, contrary to his expectation, that the young shoots 

 which these layers had produced afforded, in the following 

 spring, much blossom. The variety of plum experimented 

 on, Mr. Knight believes to be one exceedingly productive 

 of blossom : " but," he adds, " I doubt much if such blos- 

 soms would have appeared, if the variety had been a century- 

 old." Thus, while Mr. Knight hence infers that grafts or 

 seeds taken from the bearing branches of very young seedling 

 trees afford trees capable of bearing freely at a very early- 

 age, and, in consequence of their youthfulness, likely to con- 

 tinue to grow with health and vigour ; yet he readily admits 

 that this information will not subserve the object of prolong- 

 ing the duration of existing varieties of fruits, if every part of 

 seedling trees is in the same degree affected by age. This, 

 however, Mr. Knight states, is not the case ; for " the decay 

 of the powers of life in the roots of seedling trees is exceed- 



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