82 ih^ barter's JtontMg. 



PHILADELPHIA, MAECH, 1867. 



-^11 Cornmunications for the- Editor should be addressed, 

 "Thomas Meehan, Germantown, Philadelphia," and Business Let. 

 fcers directed to " W. G. P. BrincKloe, Box Philadelphia." 



For Terms of Subscription see second page of cover. 

 For Ternas of Advertising see page 33. 

 Volumes 1, $1 ; 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 unbound,$2 each. 



HAISING SEEDLING FRUIT. 



Among the Pleasures of Gardening there are few 

 more interesting than the endeavor to raise new 

 seedhng fruits, flowers, or plants of improved qual- 

 ities. When the journalist, in the exercise of his 

 duties, warns the public that new varieties may not 

 be quite as good as the natural ardor of the raisers 

 may lead the buyer to expect; or when he asserts 

 that very few seedlings of superior merit have ap- 

 peared out of hundreds offered, and that therefore 

 seedling fruits are a "nuisance," he must not be 

 understood as discouraging efforts to produce good 

 things. All that is objected to is the haste to be- 

 lieve or assert that something superior to any thing 

 existing has been raised, and which the history of 

 most fruits of the past few years has shown to be 

 very unfortunate conclusions in the main for those 

 who have had to buy them. 



It is not so easy to improve fruits as many persons 

 think. We seem to have increased their good qual- 

 ities in some respects, but we soon find that there 

 is a limit, and that we speedily reach the boundary 

 beyond which we cannot go. We are accustomed 

 to look on our sweet and large apples with some 

 commiseration for our ancestors at no very distant 

 date, who had, we are taught, nothing but "harsh 

 crabs ;"but the history of the Lacustrine inhabitants 

 of Switzerland shows that they had pretty good 

 apples in their days before even the knowledge of 

 iron had any existence. 



We can slightly increase the size of fruits, and 

 render their flavor a little more palatable, and this 

 improvement once made, we can seldom make more 

 of it. 



There is no instance, that we now remember, of 

 any superior friiit being raised from one already 

 considered as such, although that is the Van Mons' 

 theory. He took seedlings, raised from them, select- 

 ed the best, again raised, and, continued on improv- 

 ing with each generation— but as Mr. Wilder well re- 

 marks in one of his Pomological addresses, he took 

 no thought of the immense amount of Pollen of other 



varieties floating through his orchard, and which 

 renders his successes due to hybridization, rather 

 than to the theory of progressive development he 

 Sought to sustain. • Thousands of seedlings from the 

 Seckel, Bartlett and other popular kinds have been 

 raised without any one being better than the parent 

 in those qualities which render them famous. 



Notwithstanding all the trials that have been 

 made in this direction, our best new fruits are gen- 

 erally those discovered by accident, coming from 

 whence no one knows, and originating no one can tell 

 how. Even when the processes are supposed to be 

 known, accident has evidently more to do with the 

 matter than design. The origin of Hovey's Seedling 

 Strawberry is supposed to be well understood, but 

 though too many years have elapsed since its intro- 

 duction, the raisers have never been able to produce 

 one they think better. Perfection was reached at 

 a single jump, and reaching it, remained there. 



In the endeavor to raise new fruits, therefore, we 

 cannot but regard the teachings of Yan Mons as 

 having been particularly unfortunate, and the cause 

 of an immense amount of labor and skill being real y 

 thrown away. The true policy is to take inferior 

 kinds, evidently not far removed from a wild state, 

 and hybridize them with kinds that have some qual- 

 ity we would like incorporated into the kind we 

 would develop to a higher grade. The fixed habit 

 of the wilding once broken, it will proceed in its 

 ownseedHngs naturally onward, until some limit is 

 reached ; when the seedling raiser must begin again 

 on some other wilding as before. 



Mr. Parry tells us he has never been able to raise 

 any thing from the Philadelphia Raspberry equal 

 to the parent, this has been the experience of all 

 with Delaware Grape, Lawton Blackberry, and so 

 on. If the same experiments had been made in 

 starting from a wilding, the results would have been 

 different; and herein lies the probability, that Wil- 

 son's Early mav be desirable, because it is in some 

 way derived from the Dewberry stock, which before 

 had made no steps towards improvement. 



There are none who have gardens but who would 

 derive much pleasure from the eff"ort to raise seed- 

 ling fruits or flowers. We are anxious that their 

 efforts should not be misdirected, and hope they 

 will weigh well our remarks. 



COURTEOUS CORRESPONDENCE. 



When we take up a religious or political newspa- 

 per, we are pained by the acrimonious personali- 

 ties, and tone of keen sarcastic irony with which 

 the writers discuss topics with one another. The 

 effort seems to be to show how sharp one can keep 



