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PROPAGATION BY SEEDS. 41 
the Grey Achan, the Green Yair, or others, that are hardy 
or of British origin. 
As this is a subject of interest, we may state some of the 
precautions adopted by Mr. Knight and his followers, in 
conducting their experiments. It is, in the first place, a 
tule to employ seeds of the finest kinds of fruit, and to 
take them from the largest, ripest, and best flavored speci- 
mens of the fruit. When Mr. Knight wished to procure 
some of the old apples in a healthy and renovated state, he 
prepared stocks of such good sorts as could be propagated 
from cuttings; he planted them against a south wall in 
rich soil, and then grafted them with the kind required. 
In the following winter the young trees were taken up, 
their roots retrenched, and then replanted in the same 
place, by which mode of treatment they were thrown into 
bearing when only two years old. Not more than a couple 
of apples were allowed to remain on each tree, and these, 
in consequence, attained a larger size and more perfect 
maturity. The seeds of these apples were then sown, in 
the hope of procuring an equally excellent offspring. In 
the case of cross-impregnation, every seed, though taken 
from the same fruit, produces a different variety, and these 
varieties, as might be anticipated, prove to be of very vari- 
ous merit. In general those seeds are to be preferred 
which are plump and round. An estimate of the value of 
the seedling trees may be formed, even during the first 
summer of their growth, from the resemblance they bear, 
in bud and foliage, to highly cultivated and approved trees. 
The leaves of promising seedlings improve in character, 
becoming thicker, rounder, and more downy every season. 
Those whose buds in the annual wood are full and, promi- 
nent, generally prove more productive than those whose 
buds are small and seemingly shrunk into the bark. Harly 
