must be the object of cultivation to refine even by enervating the fruit tree, to subdue its coarse exuberance of vegetation, and while probably lessening the quantity of the foliage as well as the size and vigour of the seeds to improve the quality of the pulp or flesh surrounding the latter. Finding that wild trees transplanted into gardens altered but little, or, though their leaves and fruit might grow larger, that the latter did not become better in quality, and that suckers, buds, or grafts taken from them did but reproduce similar plants, he sought in the seed for means of improvement, and found that the pips of wild fruit sown in good soil produced plants which differed somewhat from the parent (mostly for the better) and from each other; their seeds replanted advanced another stop, and so on, until a certain ultimate point of perfection was reached, when a retrograde movement began, and if the sowing process were still persevered in the descendants of the good plants became worse and worse, until they ended finally, as worthless wildings, much where the original ancestor began. The coincidence of Dr. Lindley, in at least the latter part of this theory, seems apparent from a remark in his works that—"There can be no doubt that if the arts of cultivation were abandoned for only a few years, all the annual varieties of plants in our gardens would disappear and be replaced by original wild forms." The retrograde tendency seems to be most strong in old trees, and Van Mons therefore gathered his first seeds from young trees of common kinds yet not absolutely crabs, and as soon as the trees produced from them bore fruit, which usually proved to be of very middling quality, but at least differing from the parent, and mostly a little in advance of it, ho chose out the best and again planted their seeds. The next generation was found to come more quickly into bearing, while their quality was still more promising; their offspring showed yet greater amelioration, and each succeeding family bringing forth fruit sooner, and producing a greater number of valuable varieties, when the fifth generation was reached the trees began to bear in the third year after planting, and nearly all had attained great excellence. To use Van Mons' own words, "I have found," says he, "this art to consist in regenerating in a direct line of descent and as rapidly as possible an improving variety, taking care that there be no interval between the generations. To sow, to resow, to sow again, to sow perpetually, in short to do nothing but sow is the practice to be pursued, and which cannot be departed from; and this is the whole secret of the art I have employed."
The constant springing up of fine now varieties of fruits in the American States is, as the author of "The Fruits of America" admits, a confirmation of the Van Mons theory, for while the colonists who had taken pains to bring with them seeds of the very best English fruits were doomed to see a grievous falling off in the degenerate produce resulting from their planting, the seedlings proving little better than wild trees, in the course of years this ebbing tide has turned again and borne transatlantic growths with onward flow to heights of excellence beyond what had ever been attained by the British trees from which they are descended; and had the process of continually rearing new generations of seedlings been uninterruptedly followed the good result might perhaps have been much sooner arrived at. Assuredly the Belgian's theory was founded on an observance of natural laws, and in practice his system proved a great success, for having himself raised no less than eighty thousand seedlings, from these and many thousands of others reared by his disciples in Belgium and elsewhere, an immense number of new varieties of great excellence have been obtained, among which the palm is usually given to the Buerré Diel. The method, however, is attended with several disadvantages, for being avowedly an enfeebling process, the trees so grown are usually of weak habit, and apt very soon to decay or become unhealthy; and being, too, almost absolutely artificial products, they often require an unintermittent care and culture never needed by the hardy children of Nature, so that some of the Flemish pears latest introduced into America have already begun to show symptoms of decay or disease. Whether it be that our climate suits them better, or that our cultivators pay them more attention, the pears of Belgium succeed better in England and are found much hardier than those of either France or Jersey, which seldom thrive here, or at least are very precarious. Yet though both England and America have gladly availed themselves of the result of Van Mons' labours, the process which he pursued has never found much favour with us, and still less with our more impatient and "go-a-head" cousins, so long a time being required before any result can be expected. Some have tried raising seedlings without observing any method, but as a proof of the capriciousness of fortune in such matters, a celebrated French horticulturist has recorded that for fifty years ho had been in the habit of planting pear pips without ever having thus produced a good variety; while on the other hand Major Esperen, of Belgium, who simply sowed seeds indiscriminately and trusted to chance, originated five or six sorts so fine as to be unsurpassed by any in the Van Mons col-