THE FRUIT GARDEN. 



305 



fruits were multiplied and improved ; and in the nineteenth, 

 they appear to have arrived at a degree of perfection, which 

 could not have been anticipated by our ancestors, while content 

 with the fruits which our native land produced. To the exer- 

 tions of Knight, Braddick, and others, we are indebted for 

 many of our best fruits, and not only for the improvement of 

 our native sorts, but also for the inti'oduction of several foreign 

 kinds. 



The cultivation of good fruits requires the utmost attention 

 of the gardener. The introduction of a worthless culinary 

 annual, or perennial vegetable into a garden, is a loss com- 

 paratively trivial to the introduction of a worthless, or bad 

 fruit-tree ; the one only disappoints us for a season, the other 

 for a number of years. The one can be rectified, perhaps the 

 same year, if not, the succeeding one ; but the other requires 

 many years to arrive at that perfection, which will enable us to 

 judge of its merits. The disappointment is therefore great, 

 when we expect to be repaid for our trouble and anxious care 

 for years, by seeing ourselves in the possession of a fine fruit, 

 to find it at last a fi'uit of less merit than any other in the gar- 

 den ; yet nothing is of so frequent occurrence. 



It is the fate of man to fall into error, and to overshoot the 

 mark, when over-anxious in the pursuit of certain objects, and 

 perhaps, in no instance, is the truth of this maxim more clearly 

 exemplified than in the cultivation of fruits. It has become 

 fashionable, and it appears to be the priminn mobile of certain 

 horticulturists, to cultivate varieties and sub-varieties of fruits 

 beyond all reasonable bounds ; many of which are disseminated 

 over the country to the disappointment of hundreds. True it 

 is, that new, or improved fruits, are only to be obtained by 

 propagating many varieties, out of which those only of a supe- 

 rior quality should be chosen. This is a laudable pursuit in 

 the horticulturist, and to many eminent and intelligent gentle- 

 men and gardeners, we are indebted for their unwearied exer- 

 tions in this particular branch of horticultural science ; but it 

 is to be regretted, that more attention and caution have not 

 been exercised in distributing those sorts, which are of real 

 merit, and consigning the less worthy to the fagot-pilo. 

 C(;llections of fruit seem now to be more appreciated, in pro- 



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