PROPAGATION BY SEEDS. 39 
the peach-orchards of America, for instance, which are 
planted with the kernels of choice sorts, there are seldom 
more than a few trees affording fruit fit for the tablo, the 
produce of the majority being so worthless that it is usual- 
ly employed for feeding hogs. Notwithstanding this em- 
barrassing circumstance, there are some considerations 
which render this mode of propagation af once interesting 
and important to horticulturists. It is the only way by 
which we can procure new kinds to supply the place of 
those which are falling into decay; and to some extent it 
affords the means of adapting the more tender sorts to the 
rigor of our climate. 
It is well known that some of the favorite cider ap- 
ples of the seventeenth century have become extinct, 
and others are fast verging into decrepitude; and hence 
the conclusion has been drawn, that all our present 
fruits, as they are artificial in their constitution, arc 
also limited in their duration. Hach variety spring- 
ing from an individual at first, however extended by 
grafting or budding, partakes of the qualities of the 
individual; and where the original is old, there is in- 
herent in the derivatives the tendency to decay incident to 
old age. It is assumed that all the individual trees of any 
given variety, such as the Golden Pippin, or the Gray 
Leadington, are in a lax sense equivalent to one indivi- 
dual. By careful management, the health and life of this 
composite individual may be prolonged; and grafts insert- 
ed into vigorous stocks, and nursed in favorable situations, 
may long survive their parent tree; still there is a sure 
progress towards extinction, and the only renewal of the 
individual, the only true reproduction, is by sowing seed. 
It is admitted by those who have paid attention to the 
