DURATION OF VARIETIES OF FRUIT-TREES. 



15 



We are not without remedy for varieties that have partially decayed 

 in a certain district. If the trees have once been productive of excellent 

 fruit, and are still in a sound condition, though enfeebled, a thorough 

 renewal of their powers will again restore them to health. To effect 

 this, the soil about the roots should be replaced by new, enriched by 

 manure or peat-compost, and mixed with the mineral substances named 

 in the preceding page. The bark of the trunk and large branches should 

 be well scraped, and, as well as all the limbs, thoroughly washed with 

 soft soap ; the head should be moderately pruned ; and finally, the tree 

 should be suffered to bear no fruit for the two following seasons. After 

 this it will generally bear excellent fruit for several years again. 



In making plantations of fine old varieties, in districts where the 

 stock has become feeble, something may be gained by procuring grafts or 

 trees from more favorable localities, where the fruit is still as fair as ever, 

 and care should be exercised in selecting only the healthiest grafts or 

 trees. Nurserymen in unfavorable districts should endeavor to pro- 

 pagate only from trees of healthy character ; and if those in their own 

 vicinity are diseased, they should spare no pains to bring into their nurse- 

 ries and propagate only such as they feel confident are healthy and 

 sound. On them, next to the soil, depends very considerably the vigor 

 or debility of the stock of any given variety in the country around 

 them. 



In Mr. Knight's original essay on the Decay of Varieties, he clearly 

 stated a circumstance that most strongly proves what we have here endea- 

 vored to show, viz. : that the local decline of a variety is mainly owing to 

 neglect, and to grafting on bad stock. We allude to the fact repeatedly 

 verified, that healthy young shoots, taken from the roots of an old variety 

 in apparent decline, produce trees which are vigorous and healthy. " The 

 decay," says he, " of the powers of life in the roots of seedling trees is 

 exceedingly slow comparatively with that in the branches. Scions (or 

 shoots) obtained from the roots of pear-trees two hundred years old 

 afford grafts which grow with great vigor, and which are often covered 

 with thorns like young seedling stocks ; whilst other grafts, taken at the 

 same time from the extremities of the branches of such trees, present a 

 totally different character, and a very slow and unhealthy growth. I do 

 not conceive that such shoots possess all the powers of a young seedling, 

 but they certainly possess no inconsiderable portion of such powers." 



This is nothing more, in fact, than going back to the roots — the por- 

 tion of the tree least exhausted — for the renewal of the health of a variety 

 when the branches of the tree have been exhausted by overbearing, &c. 

 It is a simple and easy mode of increasing the vigor of a sort of delicate 

 habit, to take scions from young root-suckers for grafting anew. This 

 can of course only be done with trees that grow on their own roots, or 

 have not been grafted. 



supplied the tree must decline. In light soils this speedily happens. In strong 

 clayey or rocky soils, the natural decomposition of which affords a continual store 

 of lime, potash, &c. , the necessary supply of inorganic food is maintained, and 

 the variety continues healthy and productive. 



