Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

Because, as yet, no certain rules can be laid down for the production of a given result by crossing flower on flower, it does not follow that there are not certain invariable principles which govern the process. It is but a little while since breeding animals had any pretension to scientific rules. But, by careful practice and observation, the most important improvement has been attained in all the animals belonging to the farm. And if careful research and experiment do not result in absolute certainty, they will yet render the production of fine varieties of fruit, by the crossing of the old ones, a matter of much less chance than it now is.

The art of cross-fertilization is being much more practised by florists than by pomologists, and for obvious reasons. What the breeder of annuals can do in a few months requires more than as many years from him that essays to raise new fruits. Many florists’ flowers, however, require as long and even a longer time than apples or pears; and it is a marvel that the phlegmatic patience of the tulip-loving Dutch Jobs should not have found imitators in the orchard. If a man can wait ten years to ascertain that all his seedling bulbs are good for nothing, or at the best, that out of ten thousand, but one or two are worth keeping, surely the patience of an enthusiast in fruit ought not to snap by being drawn through such a space.

Two methods for originating new varieties of fruit have been practised; the natural method of Van Mons, and the artificial method of Knight. Van Mons, born at Brussels in 1765, was a man of fine genius and thorough education. Although he is chiefly known as a pomologist, his labors in the nursery were only incidental to the regular occupation of a public scientific life. M. Poiteau quaintly says of him that he writes “on the gravest subjects, in the midst of noise, in a company of persons who talk loudly on frivolous

subjects, and takes part in the conversation without stopping his pen.”

Van Mons’ theory is founded upon two physical facts:

1. That all seeds in a state of nature can be made by cultivation to vary from their condition, which variations may be fixed, and become permanent.

2. That all cultivated seeds have a tendency to return toward that natural state from which they originally varied. We say toward, for he supposed that an improved fruit would never return absolutely to the original and natural type.

It was upon this last principle that Van Mons accounted for the fact, that as a general thing, the seeds of fine old varieties of fruit produced only inferior kinds. Recourse could not be had therefore to seeds of improved fruit.

On the other hand, the seed of fruits absolutely wild would produce fruits exactly like their original. If the seed of the wild pear be gotten from the wood and planted in a garden, every seed will yield only the wild pear again. But if a wild pear be transplanted, and put under new influences of soil, climate and cultivation, its fruit will begin to augment and improve. The change is not merely upon the size and appearance of the fruit, it affects also the qualities of the seed. For if the seed be now planted, the difference between a wild pear, in a state of nature and the same wild pear-tree in a state of cultivation will at once appear in this, that whereas the seed of the first is constant, the seed of the second shows an inclination to vary. Here then is a starting. When once the habit of variation is gained, the foundation of improvement is laid. In a short time the enthusiasm of Van Mons had collected into his garden 80,000 trees upon which he was experimenting, nor can the result of his labors be better stated than in the words of M. Poiteau:

“That so long as plants remain in their natural situation, they do not sensibly vary, and their seeds always produce the same; but on changing their climate and territory