THE PRODUCTION OF NEW VARIETIES OF FRUIT. 



7 



phere, it is stated by one of the most celebrated of the old writers on 

 fruits, Duhamel of France, that he had been in the habit of planting 

 seeds of the finest table pears for fifty years without ever having pro- 

 duced a good variety. These seeds were from trees of old varieties of 

 fruit. 



The American gardener will easily perceive, from what we have stated, 

 a great advantage placed in his hands at the present time for the ameli- 

 oration of fruits by this system. He will see that, as most of our Amer- 

 ican varieties of fruit are the result of repeated sowings, more or less 

 constantly repeated, he has before him almost every day a part of the 

 ameliorating process in progress ; to which Dr. Yan Mons, beginning de 

 novo, was obliged to devote his whole life. Nearly all that it is necessary 

 for him to do in attempting to raise a new variety of excellence by this 

 simple mode, is to gather his seeds (before they are fully ripe) from a 

 seedling sort of promising quality, though not yet arrived at perfection. 

 The seedling must be quite young — must be on its own root (not graft- 

 ed) ; and it must be a healthy tree, in order to secure a healthy gener- 

 ation of seedlings. Our own experience leads us to believe that he will 

 scarcely have to go beyond one or two generations to obtain fine fruit. 

 These remarks apply to most of our table fruits commonly cultivated. 



In order to be most successful in raising new varieties by successive 

 reproduction, let us bear in mind that we must avoid — 1st, the seeds of 

 old fruit-trees ; 2d, those of grafted fruit-trees ; and 3d, that we have 

 the best grounds for good results when we gather our seeds from a 

 young seedling tree, which is itself rather a perfecting than a perfect 

 fruit. 



It is not to be denied that, in the face of Dr. Yan Mons' theory, in 

 this country new varieties of rare excellence are sometimes obtained at 

 once by planting the seeds of old grafted varieties ; thus the Lawrence's 

 Favorite and the Columbia plums were raised from seeds of the Green 

 Gage, one of the oldest European varieties. 



Such are the means of originating new fruits by the Belgian mode. Let 

 us now examine another more direct, more interesting, and more scientific 

 process — cross-breeding; a mode almost universally pursued now by skil- 

 ful cultivators in producing new and finer varieties of plants ; and which 

 Mr. Knight, the most distinguished horticulturist of the age, so success- 

 fully practised on fruit-trees. 



Cross-breeding. 



In the blossoms of fruit-trees, and of most other plants, the seed is the 

 offspring of the stamens and pistil, which may be considered the male and 

 female parents, growing in the same flower. Cross-breeding is, then, 

 nothing more than removing out of the blossom of a fruit-tree the 

 stamens, or male parents, and bringing those of another and different 

 variety of fruit, and dusting the pistil or female parent with them, — a 

 process sufficiently simple, but which has the most marked effect on the 

 seeds produced. It is only within about fifty years that cross-breeding 

 has been practised ; but Lord Bacon, whose great mind seems to have 

 had glimpses into every dark corner of human knowledge, finely fore- 

 shadowed it. " The compounding or mixture of plants is not found out, 

 which, if it were, is more at command than that of living creatures ; where- 

 fore, it were one of the most notable discoveries touching plants to find 



