AUGUST. 
227 
French varieties, twelve of the best. 
Chauvieri 
Feu Incomparable 
Eugenie Duval 
Gloire de Bellevue 
Napoleon the Third 
Piscatoric 
Ernest Duval 
Guillaume Severyns 
James Odier 
Madame Furtado 
„ Piscatorie 
Roi des Feu 
FROM WHAT CAUSES DO THE UNHEALTHINESS OP 
MANY OF OUR FRUIT TREES PROCEED? 
As certain writers have been propounding views upon the subject of 
the deterioration of races of plants (and which views exactly coincide 
with a line of argument propounded in Carpenter’s “ Physiology of the 
Human Frame ” upon the deterioriation of the human race), I make 
no apology in bringing this article before your readers. I will, there¬ 
fore, endeavour to show the advance, and the causes of that advance, 
of our fruits since the Creation, which, as you state at page 176, were 
found to be “ very good,” and which, under the eastern and tropical sun 
they undoubtedly were, as Nature has there been very lavish with her 
Figs, Bread-fruit, Guava, Banana, Plantain, &c. Therefore, it is not 
to the tropics that we must look for advancement, but to climes v/here, 
further removed from the equator, the skill of man’s cultivation is 
requisite to counteract the stern seasons of ice and snow, and whose 
natural fruits consist of sour and bitter crabs, the thorny and hard- 
wooded Pear, the wild Plum and Cherry, each and all of which in 
their wild state are very distinct in their species, and their seeds 
produce the exact counterpai’t of their parents, and will always 
continue to do so, so long as they remain in their natural state only. 
But let us take one of these distinct and original species and plant it 
into our gardens in highly cultivated soil, we shall find that it will be 
stimulated into a more luxurious habit of growth; its fruit will also be 
larger, but we shall still find the same colour and flavour there as in its 
native wilds. But by saving the seeds from this fruit, and sowing them 
in richly cultivated soil we shall find the young plants produced there¬ 
from having a tendency to vary from the original, both in form of 
growth and general appearance, as well as in fruits, many of which 
will be found to be superior to their parents both in colour and flavour ; 
and, as the young plants will be likely to vary from each other, conse¬ 
quently they will each one constitute a new variety, and as often as 
this reproduction is repeated so often do the number of varieties increase. 
Having thus become possessed of a variety which has moved out of its 
original form, we have the means of indefinitely extending these 
varieties; for, having broken the original habit of the species, it has 
always after a tendency to depart from its primitive state, but neverthe¬ 
less the greater portion of its seedlings will still retain a type of its 
parent, but here and there will be found one that has varied or broken 
quite away from all likeness of its original; consequently, in this plant 
is founded the hopes of the cultivator. 
Q 2 
