4^0 FRUIT. 



In this way, and foi( the most part by the ordinary chances and 

 results of culture, and without a direct' application of a scientific 

 system, what maybe called the natural limits of any. fruit-tree ox 

 plant, may be largely extended. We ^ say largely, because there are 

 certain boundaries beyond which the plants of the tropics cannot 



' be acclimated. The sugar cane cannot, by any process yet known, 

 be natui'alized on Lake, Superior, or the Indian corn on Hudson's 

 Bay. But every body at the South knows that the range of the 

 ^ugar cane has been gradually extended northward, more than one 

 hundred miles; and the Indiail com is, cultivated now, ^v^n fdr 

 north in Canada. 



It is by .watching these natural laws, as seen here and there in 

 irregular examples, and reducing ihem to Something like a system, 

 and acting upon the principles which may be deduped from them, 

 that we may labor diligently towards a ,certain result, and not trust 

 to, chance, groping about in the da^k, blindly. \ 



Although the t\yo modes by which the production of a new ya^ 

 riety of a fruit or flower — ;-the first by saving the sepds of the very 

 fruit only, and, the other hj ■ oross-breedithg when the flo\v;6rs are 

 about expanding — are very well known, and have been largely pra# 

 tised by the florists and gardeners of Eurojie for many y^ars, in 

 bringing jnto existence most of the fine .vegetables i^and flowers, and , 

 many of the fruits that we now possess, it is remarkable.- that little 

 attention has been paid in all these efforts to acclirmtmg the new 

 sorts by scientific ,reprodnotion from seed. . Thus, in the case of 

 flo.wer^T- while the catalogues are filled. with new verbenas every 

 year, no one, as we can learn, has endeavored to originate a hardf 

 verbena, thongh one of the trailing purple species is a hardy herhsr 

 ceous border flower — and perhaps hybrids might be raised between it 

 and the. scarlet soi-ts, that would be Jasting?and invaluable ornaments 

 to the garden^ So with , the gooseberry. This fruit shrub, so fine 

 in the damp oliinate of jEngland, is so imsuited, to liieUnited States 

 generally— or at .least most of the English sorts are^<Jiat not one 

 bush in twenty, bears fruit free from mildew. And yet, so far as 

 we know, no horticulturist has attempted to naturalize the cultivated 



■ gooseberry in the only way it is lUiely to become naturalized, viz.— 

 by raising new varieties from seed in this country, so that they may 



