40 FRUIT GARDEN. 
subject, that this curious principle of vegetable economy 
holds true, at least in so far as regards fruit trees. 
The late Mr. Knight, (to whom this ingenious theory is 
due,) conceived the idea of supplying the lack of fine old 
varieties by semination. It further occurred to him, that 
advantage might be taken of that tendency which plants ex- 
hibit on repeated sowings, to adapt themselves to the cli- 
mates in which they are raised, so that trees of warmer 
countries may thus become habituated to colder regions. 
He therefore devoted much of his attention to the produc- 
tion of improved and robust varieties; and his zeal and 
labors have been rewarded by the Acton Scott Peach, tho 
Ingestrie and Downton Apples, and many others, in al- 
most every sort of hardy fruit. Mr. Knight entertained 
the opinion, deduced, we may presume, from experiment, 
that more is to be expected from hybrid varieties, than 
from the mere reproduction of old kinds; he therefore had 
recourse to the nice operation of dusting the pollen of one 
kind on the pistil of another. He opened the unexpanded 
blossom of the variety destined to be the female parent of 
the expected progeny, and with a pair of fine-pointed scis- 
sors, cut away all the stamens, while the anthers were yet 
unripe, taking care to leave the style and the stigma unin- 
jured. When the female blossom, thus prepared, came 
naturally to expand, the blossoms of the other variety des- 
tined to be the male parent were applied. Mr. Knight 
has often remarked in the progeny a strong prevalence of 
the constitution and habits of the female parert: in this 
country, therefore, in experimenting on pears, the pollen 
of the more delicate French kinds, such as (Crasanne,) 
Colmar, and Chaumontelle, should be dusted upon the 
flowers (always deprived of stamens) of the Muirfowl egg, 
