Page:Midland naturalist (IA midlandnaturalis01lond).pdf/372

The Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club is to be warmly congratulated on this sumptuous publication, by the preparation of which they have engaged in a work of national importance. The hardy fruits of he country are of vast economic value, while their importance as articles of food, and from a sanatory point of view, can scarcely be overstated. Of all the fruits which this country yields in abundance none are more deservedly appreciated than apples and pears. They may be profitably grown to a greater or less extent in nearly all parts of the British Islands; in many places they are successfully grown in enormous quantities. Apples and pears vary much in flavour and quality: some of the most esteemed are also the most prolific. To know which are the best kinds for any given locality and climate is manifestly important ta all possessors of orchards or gardens. As knowledge on the subject becomes more general fewer mistakes will be made, and there is now no reason why a worthless or unsuitable variety should ever again be planted. "The Herefordshire Pomona" will spread sound knowledge on these and other points: and we trust this valuable publication will speedily become as widely known as its merits deserve.

To the labours, intelligent, unremitting, and beneficial, of the late Thomas Andrew Knight, a native of Herefordshire, and for years the President of the Loudon Horticultural Society, may be traced what may not improperly be called the revival in recent times of hardy fruit cultivation, Dr. Bull (one of the most valuable members of the Woolhope Club) gives an interesting account of Mr. Knight’s useful work in pages 29-38 of the work before us. He discusses at length the theory which Mr. Knight so thoroughly believed, that a graft can live no longer than the original tree from which it is taken. He plainly shows how incorrect it is. "The notion," he says, "seems to rest upon the assumption that the new wood which proceeds from the graft is not a new tree, but only a detached part of the parent. But this is evidently a mistake. A branch produced by a graft is as distinctly a new and separate individual as a branch produced by a cutting. In both cases the bud is the source of new growth; and. physiologically speaking, a seed itself differs little from a bud, except in being more carefully protected, and in being spontaneously detached. The embryo in a seed, the bud inserted in budding, the buds in a graft or in a cutting, differ only in their position; and each, as it develops, becomes a new individual, not a mere dependent portion of the parent."^[1] This unsound theory of Knight's led him to make experiments for the origination of new varieties of our hardy fruits worthy of general cultivation, with a view to restock our orchards and

1. ↑ Any of our readers interested in this subject, and desirous of investigating it, will find an able and full discussion in Dr. Lindley's "Theory of Horticulture," chap. xvii., pp. 163-180, ed. 1855.