56 HISTORST, IMPROVEMENT, AND NOMENCLATURE. 



Van Mons, who directed his labors chiefly to the pear, pro- 

 duced many new and excellent varieties, by a constant and 

 successive selection of the best seedlings. He first made a 

 large collection of natural stocks, or wild pears, choosing 

 those which, from the appearance of the wood and leaf, he 

 had reason to believe, would he most likely to produce the 

 best fruit. As soon as the first of these bore, he selected the 

 best, and planted the seeds. Selections were again made, 

 from the first, of these, and so on in continued succession ; the 

 best and soonest in bearing were uniformly chosen. He 

 thus obtained fruit from the eighth generation ; each suc- 

 cessive experiment yielding an improved result on the pre- 

 ceding. At the fourth generation many of the fruits were 

 good, several excellent, but a smaller number still bad. He 

 had, in the early part of this series of experiments, no less 

 than eighty thousand trees ; hence in selecting from so large 

 a number, his chance for fine sorts was far greater than from 

 a small collection ; and hence too the reason why, after sev- 

 en or eight improving generations, he had obtained so many 

 good varieties. In the early stages of his operations, he 

 found " that twelve or fifteen years was the mean term of 

 time, from the moment of planting the first seed of an an- 

 cient variety of the domestic pear, to the first fructification 

 of the trees which sprung from them. The trees from the 

 second sowing, yielded their first fruit at an age of from ten 

 to twelve years ; those of the third generation, at an age of 

 from eight to ten years ; those of the fourth generation, at 

 an age of from six to eight ; and those of the fifth genera- 

 tion at the age of six years. Van Mons, being actually at 

 the eighth generation, has informed me that he has obtain- 

 ed several pear trees which fruited at the age of four years."* 

 When his seedlings were at the age of three or four years, 

 he was able to judge of their appearances, though they had 

 not as yet borne ; such only were taken for further trial, as 

 enhibited the strongest probability of excellence. It is hard- 

 ly necessary to remark that in all these trials, the young 

 tree's were kept in the highest state of cultivation. 



Van Mons maintained that by selecting and planting th« 

 seeds of the first crop on the young tree, the product would 

 be less liable to run back to the original variety, than where 



* Poiteau. 



