54 SYSTEMATIC POMOLOGY. 



by little something is being accomplished. The old systems 

 are almost wholly unsatisfactoTy so far as plan goes though 

 some of them have many meritorious details. By old systems 

 is meant those found in the works of Downing, Thomas, Warder, 

 Barry and others belonging to the school of pomologists which 

 flourished about the middle of the last century. In Germany 

 and England a number of writers have attempted the classifica- 

 tion of various fruits particularly of the apple and pear. Some 

 of these are worthy of careful consideration and should be made 

 objects of study. The old classification schemes, both American 

 and foreign, are for the most part artificial. If we look for 

 new, natural systems, we find them scant, fragmentary, just 

 beginning, and in a transitional state. Possibly the best of the 

 recent work is to be found in monographs on the various fruits 

 and over the signatures of different authors in Bailey's "Cyclo- 

 pedia of Horticulture." 



In the brief classification of our common fruits which follows, 

 meritorious parts of some of the old systems have been adapted 

 to a purely botanical classification. It is far from satisfactory 

 in its present state. Opportunity has not offered for the writer 

 to thoroughly interweave the horticulture with the botany, and 

 to bring forth anything like a smoothly working system. It is 

 an expression, however, of the writer's firm belief that a service- 

 able, scientific, horticultural or pomological system of classifica- 

 tion must be a natural system, and in large measure an ex- 

 tension of the current botanical classification. In the main the 

 botany has come from Gray's "School and Field Book of 

 Botany." 



The Study of Classification. — In the study of classifica- 

 tion the laboratory offers a splendid field. The student should 

 make himself perfectly familiar with the foregoing discussion 



