10 



DURATION OF VARIETIES OF FRUIT-TREES. 



tions, either for flower or fruit, are perfectly elaborated. The first fruit 

 of the Black Eagle cherry, a fine cross-bred raised by Mr. Knight, was 

 pronounced worthless when first exhibited to the London Horticultural 

 Society ; its quality now proves that the tree was not then of sufficient 

 age to produce its fruit in perfection. 



CHAPTER II. 



REMARKS ON THE DURATION OF VARIETIES OF FRUIT-TREES. 



It was for a long time the popular notion, that when a good variety 

 of fruit was once originated from seed, it might be continued by grafting 

 and budding forever, — or, at least, as some old parchment deeds pithily 

 gave tenure of land — " as long as grass grows and water runs." 



About 1830, however, Thomas Andrew Knight, the distinguished 

 President of the Horticultural Society of London, published an Essay in 

 its Transactions tending entirely to overthrow this opinion, and to 

 establish the doctrine that all varieties are of very limited duration. 



The theory advanced by Mr. Knight is as follows : All the constitu- 

 tional vigor or properties possessed by any variety of fruit are shared at 

 the same time by all the plants that can be made from the buds of that 

 variety, whether by grafting, budding, or other modes of propagating. 

 In similar terms, all the plants or trees of any particular kind of pear or 

 apple being only parts of one original tree, itself of limited duration, it 

 follows, as the parent tree dies, all the others must soon after die also. 

 " No trees, of any variety," to use his own words, " can be made to pro- 

 duce blossom or fruit till the original tree of that variety has attained 

 the age of puberty ; * and, under ordinary modes of propagation, by 

 grafts and buds, all become subject, at no very distant period, to the 

 debilities and diseases of old age." 



It is remarkable that such a theory as this should have been offered 

 by Mr. Knight, to whose careful investigations the science of modern 

 horticulture is so deeply indebted — as, however common it is to see the 

 apparent local decline of certain sorts of fruit, yet it is a familiar fact that 

 many sorts have also been continued a far greater length of time than 

 the life of any one parent tree. Still, the doctrine has found supporters 

 abroad, and at least one hearty advocate in this country. 



Mr. Kenrick, in his new American Orchardist, adopts this doctrine, 

 and in speaking of Pears says : " I shall, in the following pages, desig- 

 nate some of these in the class of old varieties, once the finest of all old 

 pears, whose duration we had hoped, but in vain, to perpetuate. Eor, 

 except in certain sections of the city, and some very few and highly 



* This part of the doctrine has of late been most distinctly refuted, and any 

 one may repeat the experiment. Seedling fruit-trees, it is well known, are usu- 

 ally several years before they produce fruit. But if a graft is inserted on a 

 bearing tree, and, after it makes one season's fair growth, the grafted shoot is 

 bent directly down and tied there, with its point to the stock below, it will the 

 next season — the sap being checked — produce flower-buds and begin to bear, 

 long before the parent tree. 



