100 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ February 7,1884. 
nearly 100 of my assorted four-year-old English varieties now under their 
final probations. 
“ Apropos of Peru. Amongst the hatch that the parents of Bountiful 
produced (Fenn’s Onwards by Early Emperor) was a peculiarly odd- 
coloured seedling with crumpled foliage, which for its oddity I took up 
to our Royal Horticultural Society’s Committee-room at South Kensington, 
but merely to find that its exact prototype was there exhibited, and 
growing in their garden at Chiswick, from tubers they had had sent them 
that very season as a wilding from its primitive habitat in Peru. I hope 
you will be able to procure S. montanum from thence, though, for my part, 
in regard to the creation of novelty, I would pin my faith to new species, 
such as S. Fendleri, from New Mexico, for had not our old English and 
American, and our present semi-American species and varieties their 
origin in the signes of the Andes, Peru, and South America ? 
“ l n conclusion, allow me to propose to send you, without waiting for 
your answer, some seedlings of mine that will interest you, including 
Bountiful and Rector of Woodstock, to carry out the above proposed 
crosses.— Robt. Fenn.” 
“Charlotte, Vermont, U.S.A., June 27th, 1876. 
“ To Mr. Fenn, —Numerous botanical expeditions among our mountains 
into our deep dark swamps and along the shores of our lake almost con¬ 
stantly occupying my time, have been allowed too long to prevent the 
acknowledgment of the receipt of the second box of Potatoes you were so 
good as to despatch to me. The first sending has never been heard of on 
this side; but this last one reached New York in due course, and after 
some delay in our Custom House arrived here in time to be planted 
June 7th. 
“ Thanks to your very careful packing the Potatoes bore the long journey 
without any detriment. I planted them with great care, and they appeared 
above the soil in a remarkably short time, and since then have pushed on 
rapidly. While the greater part of the collection was placed in my own 
grounds, seed of several sorts was sent to the mountains ti enlarge the 
collection which I am having grown there, where, if I fail at home to get 
the crosses we so much desire, I shall, as I have great confidence to believe, 
realise success. 
“ You mention the Willard as the only one of our new strain of Potatoes, 
these lately descended from the wild or semi-wild South Americans, which 
gives you good Potatoes. Except its mother, the Early Goodrich, and the 
very wild larger white of Mr. Goodrich, I know of no others similarly fertile. 
I have been compelled to rely on the old strain of Americans, some of 
which are very productive. The Excelsior I have used oftenest—it is the 
.pollen parent of the Snowflake. It bears fruits very profusely, is a great 
cropper, and is, as our Potatoes go, of be=t flavour and quality. It would 
surely give your seedlings vigour, and in a little tin box, to go by sample 
.post with this, I send you a small tuber of it, numbered 2. With it are 
three little tubers of S. Fendleri, which though so very small, are nearly 
of average size. Under the numbers 6 and 8 I also include two grand¬ 
children of our excellent Peachblow; their mother was a beautiful white 
kidney of fair quality, which was originated at London, province of 
Ontario, Canada, and is called London \Vhite. I send these two tubers 
because the sorts are very strong growers and will supply you with the 
most potent of pollen. 
“ And how I should enjoy leading you along the sinuous shores into the 
■ deeply indented bays and around the towering wooded headlands of this 
’.ake of blue waters, or over the green glades and darker Fir-clad hills to 
the mountain summits—patches of the soil and flora of Labrador or 
1 Southern Greenland lifted up in our midst a mile above the sea! You 
would perceive a fitness in the name of our northern State. 
„ • ^ 8UC ^ pleasure is denied us both I beg you to believe that your 
friendship is deeply appreciated here, and the kindness and patience with 
which in the very busiest part of the year you met and so fully satisfied 
my requests.—C. G. Pringle.” 
I have not yet learnt how the Potatoes behaved in 
Vermont. I still live in hopes of doing so, and I will now, 
with your permission, let your readers know how the Potato 
world has wagged with me in regard to my Anglo-American 
seedlings :—Suttons’ Rarly Border, Early Regent, Fiftyfold, 
Reading Russet, and Prizetaker, are the commercial results 
• of the American Willard and Late Rose crosses with my 
‘.Bountiful. Two years after I came here I had the very 
great satisfaction to secure a few globules of pollen from Mr. 
Pringle’s American Snowflake, from a bunch of late blossom 
in my garden, so late indeed that the flowers of the Rector 
of Woodstock were over, and in short every other blossom 
for all my sorts, excepting by great good luck a couple of 
late florets, which were unfolding upon a stalk of a 
condemned seedling of the Willard by Bountiful. I never 
impregnated more carefully, or more nervously, than I did 
those two blossoms, and my anxious wish at the time was 
that they had belonged to Rector of Woodstock. At any 
rate I had got the pollen from the right source. One only 
of the berries swelled and ripened the largest Potato 
fruit I ever saw. It produced me fifty seeds, every one of 
which germinated in the following season. This has proved 
a very good disease-resisting cross, giving to commerce Sut¬ 
tons’ Ringleader, Favourite, and Lady Truscott; also, gone 
into stock for another year, two seedlings provisionally 
named Golden Spot and New Bountiful. The Royal Horti¬ 
cultural and Crystal Palace certificated Alderman De Keyser 
I hold in my own hands for the present, along with a few 
others of the batch, to ungergo further probation. Thus 
ends my Potato history up to the present. 
I am your oldest living correspondent, or I would not 
presume to become a teacher in your pages at this time of 
day, although, when I think of the old ones and look at the 
young ones, there is not much reason to call each other 
names. We all did, and you all are doing good. Esto perpetua. 
I think, though, I can impart a few words of advice anent the 
Potato. Doubtless an extra fillip will be given to the cultiva¬ 
tion of the esculent now that the Cinderella of Nature is 
countenanced by nobility, and the savants have questioned 
our doings. The outcome of the popularity that our Potato 
shows have engendered is to have created a legion of 
breeders of the esculent by crossing—I fear indiscriminate 
crossing. The Potato, like everything else, must be served 
an apprenticeship, so to speak, and, simple as it may 
appear, it has been a long and expensive study for me. I 
find, too, my seedlings are being extensively used for cross¬ 
breeding at haphazard with any variety. Now, I cannot do 
so myself without knowing it would deteriorate their quality. 
Size and appearance may be so gained, though almost 
invariably at the expense of quality. Whoever rises from 
my shoulders I should like them to rise to something better; 
to breed from my seedlings at haphazard is to go backwards 
instead of forwards. It can only be done by the careful 
study of what has gone before, and how improvement is to 
follow. Magnum Bonum may be quoted as a special gift of 
Providence—a natural seedling raised by Mr. Clarke, and, 
happily, though quite by accident, introduced to commerce, 
a circumstance that very rarely happens. My seedlings 
seem to have been considered for the nick of time, and for the 
“ new species ” seem to have been especially prepared; and in 
the very breath as I expressed myself at not seeing my way 
to any further improvement, so far as my particular hobby 
was concerned, up rises S. Maglia, S. Jamesi, &c., and to 
these, coupled with Mr. J. G. Baker’s recommendation, I 
would earnestly turn our young hybridisers’ attention.— 
Robt. Fenn, Sulhampstead. 
FRUIT-FARMING AND JAM. 
At a moment when so much is being written and said as to 
presumed fabulous profits to be made by fruit-farming, gardeners, 
fruit-growers, and the readers of the Journal of Horticulture gene¬ 
rally, are deeply interested that a subject so identified with their 
interests should be thoroughly ventilated. Who will question this 
when we see the leading politician of the age, resting from his 
labours of tree-felling at Hawarden, seizing the subject and rushing 
with it to the front with his usual vigour of advocacy ? Lord Sudeley 
has embarked in planting an estate of 500 acres with fruit trees ; 
others, we are told, are entering the lists, and a golden era of profit 
is assured as being in store for all who embark in similar enterprizes. 
It is mest important for the country that the subject should be 
truthfully dealt with, as there is no doubt that we are equal to 
growing sufficient fruit for all our wants, so also that far-seeing 
men are trying their best to meet them, though, as it seems to many, 
with but thin prospect of profit. 
Few persons are aware that in the last season Herefordshire alone 
grew a crop of Apples, much of it choice dessert fruit, second to 
none in the w r orld, and sufficient to have met the entire wants of 
London and other large cities, and yet but a small proportion of it 
left the farms on which produced. Thousands of tons of beautiful 
dessert and culinary fruit were converted into cider, and probably 
an almost equal quantity was allowed to rot under the trees, simply 
and entirely through the high rates exacted by the railways for its 
conveyance. The same, though to a more limited extent, occurred 
in other counties. It takes on an average a bushel of Apples to 
make a gallon of cider. So great was the quantity manufactured 
that casks sufficient for the storage could not be obtained. Sixpence 
- per gallon at the farm door is a fair average value of the season’s 
