2 
PRODUCTION OF NEW VARIETIES. 
midst of thorns and sloes, that man the gardener arises and 
forces nature to yield to his art. 
These improved sorts of fruit which man every where causes 
to share his civilization, bear, almost equally with himself, the 
impress of an existence removed from the natural state. When 
reared from seeds they always show a tendency to return to a 
wilder form, and it seems only chance when a new seedling is 
equal to, or surpasses its parent. Removed from their natural 
form, these artificially created sorts are also much more liable to 
diseases and to decay. From these facts arises the fruit-garden, 
with its various processes of grafting, budding and other means 
of continuing the sort ; with also its sheltered aspects, warm bor- 
ders, deeper soils, and all its various refinements of art and culture. 
In the whole range of cares and pleasures belonging to the 
garden, there is nothing more truly interesting than the produc- 
tion of new varieties of fruit. It is not, indeed, by sowing the 
seeds that the lover of good fruit usually undertakes to stock his 
garden and orchard with fine fruit trees. Raising new varieties 
is always a slow, and, as generally understood, a most uncertain 
mode of bringing about this result. The novice plants and care- 
fully watches his hundred seedling pippins, to find at last, per- 
haps, ninety-nine worthless or indifferent apples. It appears to 
him a lottery, in which there are too many blanks to the prizes. 
Fie, therefore, wisely resorts to the more certain mode of 
grafting from well known and esteemed sorts. 
Notwithstanding this, every year, under the influences of gar- 
den culture, and often without our design, we find our fruit 
trees reproducing themselves ; and occasionally, there springs 
up a new and delicious sort, whose merits tempt us to fresh trials 
after perfection. 
To a man who is curious in fruit, the pomologist who views 
with a more than common eye, the crimson cheek of a peach, the 
delicate bloom of a plum, or understands the epithets, rich, melt- 
ing, buttery, as applied to a pear, nothing in the circle of culture 
can give more lively and unmixed pleasure, than thus to pro- 
duce and to create — for it is a sort of creation — an entirely new 
sort, which he believes will prove handsomer and better than any 
thing that has gone before. And still more, as varieties which 
originate in a certain soil and climate, are found best adapted to 
that locality, the production of new sorts of fruit, of high merit, 
may be looked on as a most valuable, as well as interesting 
result. 
Besides this, all the fine new fruits, which, of late, figure so 
conspicuously in the catalogues of the nurseries and fruit gar- 
dens, have not been originated at random and by chance efforts. 
Some of the most distinguished pomologists have devoted years 
to the subject of the improvement of fruit trees by seeds, and 
have attained if not certain results, at least some general 
