34 On Producing new and early Fruits. 



though the result of them is by no means sufficiently deci- 

 sive to prove the truth of the hypothesis I am endeavour- 

 ing to establish, or the eligibility of the practice I have 

 adopted, it is amply sufficient to encourage future experi- 

 ment. 



The first species of fruit, which was subjected to experi- 

 ment by me, was the Apple ; some young trees of those va- 

 rieties of this fruit, from which I wished to propagate, were 

 trained to a south wall, till they produced buds which con-, 

 tained blossoms. Their branches were then, in the suc- 

 ceeding winter, detached from the wall, and removed to as 

 great a distance from it, as the pliability of their stems 

 would permit ; and in this situation they remained till their 

 blossoms were so far advanced, in the succeeding spring, as 

 to be in some danger of injury from frost. The branches 

 were then trained to the wall, where every blossom I suffered 

 to remain, soon expanded, and produced fruit. This at- 

 tained in a few months the most perfect state of maturity ; 

 and the seeds afforded plants, which have ripened their fruit 

 very considerably earlier than other trees, which I raised at 

 the same time, from seeds of the same fruit, which had 

 grown in the orchard. In this experiment the fecundation 

 of the blossoms, of each variety, was produced by the 

 farina of another kind ; from which process, I think, I ob- 

 tained, in this, and many similar experiments, an increased 

 vigour and luxuriance of growth; but I have no reasons 

 whatever to think that plants thus generated ripen their 

 fruit earlier than others, which are obtained by the common 

 methods of culture* I must therefore attribute the early 

 maturity of those I have described to the other peculiar 



