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the Musk Gourd (C. pepo), the Bottle Gourd (Lagenaria vulgaris), and the 
Melon (Cucumis melo), where likewise the strangest differences of form, size, 
colour, consistence, and taste are seen h\ the fruit, one is forcibly led by analogy 
to admit in the Pear tree only a single natural species. Besides, we may 
remark, in all specific groups which are so polymorphous, it is the fruit which 
varies the most, and also that in all these the fruit is inferior—that is to say, 
formed by a receptacle in which the ovaries are immersed. The adherence of 
the ovary should seem then to be the organographic condition which has the 
greatest tendency to variability in the fruit. What we know of Umbelliferce. 
Cupuliferae, and the genera Medlar and Bose, in which equally the fruit is 
inferior, certainly does not weaken this kind of view. 
Does grafting, as some maintain, modify the character of varieties ? For 
my part I do not think so; I have never, at least, observed anything to con¬ 
firm this opinion. Duhamel, for example, remarked a century ago, that the 
Imperial Oak-leaved Pear (a curious variation of foliage which I might have 
indicated before), had never more than three cells in the ovary instead of five. 
This is the case still ; the fruit has only three cells, notwithstanding it has been 
propagated by grafting only since the time of Duhamel. Many other facts of • 
the same nature might be brought forward in support of the inability of the 
graft to modify the characters of varieties—those, for example, which the 
flavour of fruits, so remarkably different from each other, affords. 
It is, then, an error against which it is well to protest—viz., the belief that 
the degeneration of our races of fruit trees is a consequence of the constant 
practice of grafting for tlieir propagation. Not a single authentic fact can be 
adduced in its favour; those which have been alleged depend on entirely 
different causes, amongst which we must place in the first line that of climates, 
or of soils incompatible with the peculiar exigencies of the variety, and very 
frequently also bad cultivation, or the abuse of pruning so frequent in our days, 
which would fain pass for perfection. Our old Pears, so justly esteemed one or 
two centuries ago, are still the same as when they were more in request; they 
ripen at the same seasons, and keep also as perfectly. It suffices, in fact, to 
quote the Epargne, Crassane, St. Germain, Doyenne, Chaumontel, Winter Bon 
Chretien and Easter Beurre, known now as the Doyenne d’Hiver, to be con¬ 
vinced that our old varieties have lost nothing of their good qualities. If we 
neglect them, it is not because they have degenerated, it is only because the 
nurserymen are interested in sending out their novelties. This degenerating of 
old races, accepted without opposition, is in reality nothing more than one of 
those works of industrial acuteness so easily excused in our days. 
Is it then more true, as Van Mons had asserted, and as most pomologists 
believe, that the seeds of good kinds of fruit produce Crabs with harsh fruit, 
reverting to what are supposed to be the specific types ? I do not hesitate to 
affirm the contrary ; and I defy any one to quote a single example of a fruit of 
any quality impregnated with the pollen of its own flower, or of others of the 
same race, whose seeds have given rise to a Crab. If a variety of merit is 
impregnated by a variety with harsh fruit, there will certainly spring from its 
seeds new varieties, which for the greater part, if not altogether, will be inferior 
in quality ; there may even be found some whose fruit shall be as bad as that of 
the wild plant which has furnished the pollen ; but this degeneration, if we may 
give it the name, is nothing more than the consequence of an ill-assorted 
crossing. We may consider it certain that every distinguished variety of Pear 
tree, and I may say of all our fruit trees, if it is fecundated by itself alone, will 
give birth to good fruit; it may and will probably differ, sometimes by one 
character, sometimes by another from the mother variety, but no one will 
assume the characters of the wilding, any more than our Cantaloup Melons 
