386 On the Effects of Age upon Fruit Trees. 



the want of a properly prepared circulating fluid ; and that 

 when such is given by efficient foliage, the bark of the most 

 debilitated variety possesses the power to occasion the neces- 

 sary secretions to take place, and the alburnum is enabled to 

 execute all its offices. 



It has been urged against the conclusion, that old age is 

 the cause of debility and decay of those varieties of fruit 

 winch have been very long cultivated, that many of the seed- 

 ling offspring of such varieties are as much diseased as their 

 parents ; and it is contended, that the failure of our best old 

 varieties of fruit has arisen from a succession of unfavourable 

 seasons. The fact, that many of the seedling offspring of old 

 diseased varieties of fruit are as much diseased as the parents 

 from which they spring is unquestionable ; but this I con- 

 ceive, proves nothing more than that diseases are hereditary 

 in the vegetable as they are in the animal world ; and, it is 

 scarcely reasonable to expect, that healthy and robust off- 

 spring can be obtained from parents, whose lives have been 

 extended beyond their natural periods by preternatural 

 means, and whose bodies are yearly falling to pieces under 

 the operation of disease ; and in which the whole of the cir- 

 culating fluids are in a morbid state. 



If a deterioration have taken place in our climate, and this 

 have occasioned the decay of our fruit trees, at what period 

 did this deterioration take place ? It is more than forty years 

 since I commenced experiments with the hope of being able 

 to raise healthy trees of the old varieties of the Cider Fruits of 

 Herefordshire ; and I know that the progressive debility of 

 those had been pointed out some years before my birth by my 

 father, who died an old man when I was an infant ; and who 

 was an extremely competent judge of the subject.. 



