APPENDIX. 
705 
But lialf the ground is not yet covered. How does the theory 
work in America ? is the most natural inquiry. In this country, 
we have soil varying from the poorest sand to the richest 
alluvial, climate varying from frigid to almost torrid— a range 
wide enough to include all fruit trees between the apple and the 
orange. 
We answer that the facts here, judged in the whole, are de- 
cidedly against the theory of the extinction of varieties. While 
here, as abroad, unfavourable soil, climate, or culture, have pro- 
duced their natural results of a feeble and diseased state of 
certain sorts of fruit, these are only the exceptions to the 
general vigour and health of the finest old sorts in the country 
at large. The oldest , known variety of pear is the Autumn 
Bergamot — believed by Pomologists to be identically the same 
fruit cultivated by the Romans in the time of Julius Caesar — • 
that is to say, the variety is nearly two thousand years old. It 
grows with as much vigour, and bears as regular and abundant 
crops of fair fine fruit in our own garden, as any sort we culti- 
vate. Whole orchards of the Doyenne (or Virgalieu) are in 
the finest and most productive state of bearing in the interior 
of this State, and numberless instances in the western states — 
and any one may see, in September, grown in the apparently 
cold and clayey soil near the town of Hudson, on the North 
River, specimens of this “outcast,” weighing three fourths of a 
pound, and of a golden fairness and beauty of appearance and 
lusciousness of flavour worthy of the garden of the Hesperides, — 
certainly we are confident never surpassed in the lustiest youth 
of the variety in France. The same is true of all the other 
sorts when propagated in a healthy manner, and grown in the 
suitable soil and climate. Wherever the soil is not exhausted 
of the proper elements the fruit is beautiful and good. The 
largest and finest crops of pears regularly produced in our own 
gardens, are by a Brown Beurre tree, only too luxuriant and 
vigorous. Of the Golden Pippin apple, we can point out trees 
in the valley of the Hudson, productive of the fairest and finest 
fruit, and the St. Germain Pears grown by a neighbour here, 
without the least extra care, are so excellent, that he may fairly 
set them against any one of the newer varieties of Winter fruit. 
On the other hand, we candidly admit that there has been for 
some time a failure of many sorts of pear and apple in certain 
parts of the country. All along the sea-coast where the soil is 
light , and has been exhausted , by long cultivation , of lime , 
potash, and phosphates , the inorganic elements absolutely 
necessary to the production of fine pears, many varieties that 
once flourished well, are now feeble, and the fruit is often 
blighted.* 
* The symptoms of the decline or decay in the pear are chiefly these, 
The tree apparently healthy in the spring, blossoms, and sets a crop of 
30 * 
