6 
think that we are indebted to the industry of the planters of the 
seventeenth, and the end of the preceding century, for most of 
those we have at present, and probably for all the old fine cider 
fruits. Of these they have left us a sufficient number; but the 
existence of every variety of this fruit appears to be confined to 
a certain period, during the earlier parts of which only it can 
be propagated with advantage to the planter. No kind of apple, 
now cultivated, appears to have existed more than two hundred 
years; and this term does not at all exceed the duration of a 
healthy tree. Vegetable, however, like animal life in indi- 
viduals, appears to have its limits fixed by nature, and immor- 
tality has alike been denied to the oak and to the mushroom ; 
to the being of a few days, and of as many centuries. The 
general law of nature must be obeyed, and each must yield its 
place to a successor. The art of the plantei- readily divides a 
single tree into almost any number that he wishes ; but the 
character of the new trees, thus raised, is very essentially differ- 
ent from that of a young seedling plant; they possess a preter- 
natural maturity, and retain the habits and diseases of the tree 
of which they naturally formed a part.” 
“All efforts which have hitherto been made to propagate 
healthy trees of those varieties which have been long in culti- 
vation, have, I believe, been entirely unsuccessful. The grafts 
grow well for two or three years, after which they become cank- ^ 
ered and mossy, and appear, what I consider them really to be, 
parts of the bearing branches of old diseased trees.” 
“AVhen I first observed the unhealthy state of all the young 
trees of these kinds, I suspected that it arose from the use of 
diseased grafts taken from old trees, and that I should be able 
to propagate all the valuable varieties by buds taken from young 
newly-grafted trees, as these can scarcely be said to take any of 
the wood of the old stock with them ; but to remove still farther 
every probability of defect which might be communicated from 
the old trees, I inserted the young shoots and buds taken from 
newly-grafted trees in other young stocks, and I repeated this 
process six times in as many years, each year taking my grafts 
and buds from those inserted in the year preceding. Stocks of 
different kinds were also used ; some where double grafted, others 
obtained from the branches of apple-trees which had emitted 
shoots from cuttings, and others from the seeds of each kind 
