[ 547 ] 



LXV. Notice of the Siberian Bittersweet, a new and valuable 

 Cider Apple. In a Letter to the Secretary. By Thomas 

 Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R. S. fyc. President. 



Read September 19, 1826. 



My Dear Sir, 



I have enclosed in the box with the Plums* sent you this 

 day, a few Apples of a variety, which, for the press, appears 

 to me to possess a number of singular and good properties 

 and qualities ; and it is one, which I exclusively plant for 

 the press, in this vicinity. The trees grow very rapidly, and 

 are free from disease of any kind. During the whole period 

 of ten years, in which alone the variety has existed, n o 

 frost has been sufficiently severe to injure materially its 

 blossoms, and I have in consequence obtained ten successive 

 crops of fruit. The American Apple-bug (the Eriosoma 

 Mali of our Transaction s)f wholly avoids the trees. I have 

 frequently inserted grafts into stocks, upon which those 

 insects abounded, and upon which they had continued to 

 abound ; but I never saw more than one instance in which they 

 were found upon the graft, and then it was just above its 

 junction with the stock ; and three days afterwards they had 

 entirely disappeared. The fruit contains much saccharine 

 matter, with scarcely any perceptible acid ; and it in con- 

 sequence affords a cider, which is perfectly free from the 



• See page 529 of this Volume. 



f See Horticultural Transactions, Vol. ii. page 162. 



vol. vi. 4 B 



