APPLE. TREE. 
were seedlings. Yet the rate of increase in the 
number of individual trees was wonderfully great ; 
so much so that for every seedling-tree which 
bore fruit in the year 1600, no fewer than one 
hundred bore fruit in the year 1700, and at least 
one thousand in the year 1800. So enormous 
was the proportion of orchard-ground previous 
to the establishment of nurseries, that, on the 
average, every farm of 100 acres had from 6 to 
10 acres under fruit trees; and as no market ex- 
isted for the orchard produce, every farmer easily 
found, amongst his great number of seedling- 
trees, more than a sufficient number of good ones 
to supply apples to his family, and indiscrimi- 
nately assigned the vast remainder for the use of 
| his hogs. Thus, seedlings of the first generation, 
all the way along from the first colonizing of 
America till the present day, have been good, or 
| at least have been similar in character to the 
parent plants ; seedlings of successive generations 
upon the same spot, must, in consequence of the 
' occupancy of the ground, have been compara- 
tively few in number, and scarcely ever sown or 
aided by man; and improved varieties, whenever 
_ any appeared, were not propagated by budding 
| and grafting, and could never have existed be- 
yond the limits of a single tree except by propa- 
gation as seedlings of the first generation. The 
many rich new varieties which have appeared in 
North America, therefore, are no such ameliora- 
tions by successive generation as the theories of 
European phytologists have supposed, but must 
be traced to the operation of a cause at once 
simple, obvious, profoundly philosophical, and in 
exquisite harmony with the general physical laws 
of the Divine providence. 
This cause is the intermixture of the pollen of 
| different varieties. Experimental florists, simply 
by the intermixture of pollen, can, at pleasure, 
vary the shade of a lily or the fragrance of a 
rhododendron, and have produced many thou- 
sands of new varieties of violets, fuschias, dahlias, 
and other select flowering plants, and perfectly 
astonishing ameliorations of the best varieties 
formerly known; and general cultivators of 
plants, whether farmers, gardeners, nurserymen, 
or practical phytologists, have, simply by the in- 
termixture of pollen, effected wonderful and very 
numerous improvements, as well as produced 
multitudinous new varieties, in many of the most 
useful culinary and agricultural plants. Nor is 
the apple-tree an exception to the power of in- 
termixed pollen, but very strikingly the reverse. 
| “Take a fruit tree of medium excellence ; average 
the opinions of the ‘ Pomological and Gardener’s 
Magazine,’ and call the Hawthornden of Scotland 
such. Plant it beyond the reach of foreign pol- 
len, and, I apprehend, its seedling offspring will 
not vary greatly from the parent standard ; some 
of the seedlings will produce better and some 
worse fruit. If those seedlings are planted so 
that their pollen intermix, the second generation 
will exhibit signs of further departure in im- 
provement and deterioration ; and this variation 
will be greater as the soil, climate, and culture 
are varied; so that, in many generations, if the 
pollen be not permitted to mix, and the climate 
and culture remain the same, the departure from 
the parent standard of goodness will be trifling ; 
but, on the contrary, if the pollen be indiscrim- 
inately mixed, and the climate and culture varied, 
the departure will be great.” Hither such im- 
proving or such deteriorating departure from the 
original as produces an entirely new and widely 
different variety is thus effected, mainly by the | 
intermixture of pollen, though partly by altera- 
tions of soil, climate, and culture, in the course 
of a few generations from any one apple plant; 
and precisely the same result is effected, solely 
by the intermixture of pollen, in a single genera- || 
tion between almost any two very different kinds 
of apple plants; not only so, but, in consequence 
of the mere intermixture of pollen from neigh- 
bouring blossoms, existing trees, without any 
generation whatever, will sometimes become mo- 
dified in their character and very sensibly altered 
in their fruit,—for example, a tree which pro- 
duces green apples may, by growing immediately 
adjacent to a tree which produces yellow apples, 
acquire the property of producing yellowish-green 
apples or even absolutely yellow apples. Now 
let the enormous numbers of North American 
apple-trees be glanced at, their original Huropean 
varieties, their indiscriminate intermixture, their 
great groupings in orchards, and their increase 
one-thousandfold in the course of two centuries ; 
and, by simply adverting to the power of inter- 
mixed pollen, we instantly understand how the | 
new varieties of North American apple-tree are so 
numerous, so strongly marked, and so exquisitely 
rich. 
When apple-tree plants are raised from seeds, 
whether the kinds for grafting upon or kinds in- 
tended to bear as seedlings, the pips orthe pomes | 
ought to be sown on dry ground in November or 
December, on wet ground in February. Almost 
all cultivators use the mere pips as seed, and even 
take care to clear them thoroughly from the 
pulp; and many in the south of England, when 
the plants to be raised are grafting sticks, sow 
pips which remain after pressing sour apples for | 
verjuice or cyder. But a decidedly more natural 
method, and one which cannot fail to educe a 
superior average healthiness and vigour in the 
plants, is either to sow the entire pomes, or to sow 
the pips in mould which has been well-manured 
with decayed apples. The flesh which surrounds 
the pips in all apples is clearly designed by the 
Creator to serve as the pabulum of the future 
tree; and its sugar, its malic acid, and its other 
constituent elements almost certainly bear to 
each other, in every variety of the plant, the 
exact proportion which will operate most benefi- 
cially on both the soil and the plumule. To with- 
hold the fleshy matter of the pomes, therefore, or 
even to substitute it with very carefully prepared 
a | 
