PREFACE. 



In the Fruit Department, while the Collections have 

 been constantly augmented by communications with Foreign 

 Gardens, the Officers of the Society, by the direction of the 

 Council, have been diligently applying themselves to the 

 examination of the varieties, with a view of determining their 

 respective merits or demerits. If no result has hitherto been 

 made public, this has arisen from the extreme difficulty of 

 the subject, the repeated trials that are required, year after 

 year, before a final opinion can be formed upon any given 

 variety, and from an unwillingness on the part of the Council 

 to authorise the publication of imperfect statements. Many 

 thousand varieties have now been subjected to the most 

 rigid scrutiny, and if there is still a great mass of matter re- 

 quiring investigation among Apples and Pears, yet with 

 respect to other fruits, the state of information, acquired at 

 the Garden, is such, that Reports upon a great number of 

 them may be now immediately expected. An account 

 of the varieties of the Pine Apple has already been read 

 before the Society, and will be followed by a constant suc- 

 cession of other Reports which will be printed in the Transac- 

 tions, and which, it is confidently anticipated, will contain 

 much important information. The details intended to be 

 comprised in these Reports will be best understood from the 

 perusal of them when printed; but in the mean while it 

 may be stated that the great objects that have been kept 

 in view, are the simplification of the nomenclature by the 

 reduction of the synonyms to order; the investigation of the 

 modes of cultivation best adapted to each variety, the effect 



