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NOTICES OF AUTHORS. 



partaking most of these qualities for resowing, their 

 disposition to vary to mildness being at the same 

 time influenced in some measure by culture and 

 abundant moist nourishment ; but these mild varie- 

 ties, although they throw out a strong annual 

 shoot while young, seldom or never reach to any- 

 considerable size of tree, unless they are nourished 

 by crab roots, their own roots being soft and fleshy, 

 and incapable of foraging at much depth or distance. 

 Their branches and twigs as they get old, are also 

 very soft and friable, covered vdth a thick bark, but 

 the timber of the stem is very little inferior in hard- 

 ness to crab timber. 



W e ask, if even the fact of these unnaturally ten- 

 der varieties (obtained by long-continued selection, 

 probably assisted by culture, soil and climate, and 

 which, without the cherishing of man, would soon 

 disappear), being of rather more porous texture of 

 wood, goes any length to prove our author's asser- 

 tion ? We have paid some attention to the fibre of 

 the genus Pyrus, and find that the Siberian crabs 

 have by far the smallest vessels. Having grafted 

 the large Fulwood upon the smallest Red Siberian 

 Crab, or Cherry-apple, the new wood layers above 

 the junction swelled to triple the thickness of those 

 below. By ingrafting other kinds upon other 



