306 



HARDY FRUIT GARDEN. 



ducing fruit of the peach and nectarine on the 

 same branch. — (Vide art. The Peach.) 



The mountaineer peach comes almost as often 

 smooth 'as downy, and was raised between the 

 red nutmeg peach and the violette hative nec- 

 tarine, conclusive enough evidence of their com- 

 mon origin. 



Native locality of fruits. — All fruits appear to 

 thrive best, with the least amount of care, in 

 the locality in which they originated. This is 

 instanced in many cases in our own country, 

 and even more strikingly so in America, where 

 we find that the Newtown pippin and the Esopus 

 Spitzenburgh are the apples of New York; Peck's 

 pleasant, and the Seek-no-farther, are those of 

 Connecticut ; the Baldwin, and the Roxbury 

 russet, the leading kinds in Massachusetts, &c. 



§ 3. ON THE DURATION, IN A HEALTHY 

 STATE, OF FRUIT TREES. 



The late eminent Mr T. A. Knight about half 

 a century ago started an opinion that every 

 variety of fruit tree had assigned to it a limited 

 period of existence, and, as the end of that period 

 approached, unmistakable evidence would be 

 given, by the declining health and vigour of the 

 trees, and also of the quality of the fruit they 

 produced, of its approaching end. Speechly, 

 Williamson, and others, refer to a deterioration 

 which appeared to them to be taking place in 

 the case of the fruit trees of their time ; but this 

 they attributed to a change of climate in our 

 country, and anticipated a restoration upon the 

 return of more genial seasons. Our own opinion 

 is strongly in favour of the theory that our 

 seasons, for many years past, have been less 

 genial and less favourable for the growth of fruit 

 than they were formerly ; and, however little 

 the mean temperature for the year, or for a 

 series of years, may differ, still we believe our 

 summers are less warm, and our springs much 

 colder, accompanied with a considerable amount 

 of frost, and this at a much later period than 

 heretofore. Before the general employment of the 

 thermometer, which is of comparatively recent 

 date, we had no other means of arriving at any- 

 thing like correct data as to the temperature of 

 our climate but the historical facts of early har- 

 vests, notwithstanding the rude system of agricul- 

 ture followed, the enormous oaks and other tim- 

 ber trees, the remains of Avhich are abundantly 

 found in bogs, and in altitudes and situations 

 where the oak can scarcely, with all our boasted 

 improvements in arboriculture, now be got to 

 grow at all ; for, with the exception of those in 

 Hamilton Park, and a few solitary specimens in 

 other places, we have no oaks in Scotland now 

 bearing any comparison with those of former 

 ages. More pertinent to our present subject, 

 however, are the data furnished by Langley in 

 his " Pomona," who has given us, in the case 

 of almost every fruit cultivated by him at Twick- 

 enham near London, the date of the very day 

 when they ripened — dates by no means corre- 

 sponding with the ripening of the very same 

 sorts, and in the very same locality, at the present 

 time. No doubt tender fruit-trees suffer much 



from a succession of cold frosty springs occurring 

 late in the season, and more especially when fol- 

 lowing a cold wet autumn, when the wood be- 

 comes only imperfectly ripened, and also when 

 the latter end of February and March has been 

 sufficiently warm to set the sap in motion, 

 causing the buds to burst forth, and the young 

 shoots and foliage to expand, as they often do 

 thus early, and are as often cut off by frost in 

 April and May. Thus far the healthy duration 

 of fruit trees is seriously affected, and they may 

 no doubt be killed outright. 



Returning, however, to Knight's theory — a 

 doctrine, we confess, we were at one time almost 

 a convert to. His views will be best explained 

 by using his own words : "I think I am justified 

 in the conclusion, that all plants of this species" 

 (the apple being that on which his experiments 

 were chiefly made), " propagated from the same 

 stock, partake in some degree of the same life, 

 and will attend the progress of that life, in the 

 habits of its youth, its maturity, and its decay, 

 though they will not be any way affected by 

 any incidental injuries the parent tree may sus- 

 tain after they are detached from it." — Knight's 

 Treatise on the Apple and the Pear, p. 15. 



This opinion received countenance from seve- 

 ral eminent pomologists, not only in this country, 

 but on the Continent and America also. Ken- 

 drick, in his " New American Orchardist," de- 

 clares his assent to it. Of the Doyenne pear he 

 says, " This most eminent of all pears has now 

 become (in America) an outcast, intolerable even 

 to sight ;" of the excellent brown beurre, "once 

 the best of all pears, now become an outcast." 

 The St Germain " has long since become an 

 abandoned variety," &c. Downing, Hovey, and 

 other American authors, deny that such a fate 

 has befallen these fine fruits ; and the healthy 

 existence of them in France, where they have 

 existed from their very origin, as well as their 

 present state in Britain, where they have all been 

 cultivated for a much longer period than they 

 have been in America, proves to us the un- 

 soundness of the doctrine, and the danger of con- 

 founding causes and effects. On this Downing 

 very sensibly remarks, in " Fruits and Fruit- 

 trees of America," p. 552 : " While we admit that, 

 in the common mode of propagation, varieties 

 are constantly liable to decay or become compa- 

 ratively worthless, we believe this is owing, not 

 to natural limits set upon the duration of a 

 variety — that it does not depend on the longe- 

 vity of the parent tree, but upon the care with 

 which the sort is propagated, and the nature of 

 the climate and the soil where the tree is grown. 

 It is," he continues, " a well-established fact, 

 that a seedling tree, if allowed to grow on its 

 own root, is always much longer lived, and often 

 more vigorous, than the same variety when 

 grafted upon another stock ; and experience has 

 also proved that, in proportion to the likeness 

 or close relation between the stock and the graft, 

 is the long life of the grafted tree. Thus, a 

 variety of pear, grafted on a healthy pear seed- 

 ling, lasts almost as long as upon its own roots. 

 Upon a thorn stock it does not endure so long ; 

 upon a mountain ash rather less ; upon a quince 

 stock still less, until the average life of the pear 



