It has been so often said that native varieties of fruit are necessarily better adapted to the locality where they grew, because, thus growing, they acquire characteristics peculiarly fitting them to such place, that the idea has almost passed into an axiom and is assented to by perhaps a large majority of cultivators, and any attempt to advance an opinion at variance with it may appear simply ridiculous. Yet, as everybody in this happy country is at liberty to be just as ridiculous, or just as heretical as he pleases, you will doubtless give me leave to say that one individual does not assent to it.

I am reminded of the subject at this time by the following passage in an article "On raising fruits from seed," in the August number of the Horticulturist: "A variety springing up from the seed, in any given locality, is, in the course of its production, endowed with a constitution and habits adapted to that locality, in a particular manner," etc. Now, if I understand the writer, he means to assert that sometime between the germination of the seed and the production of fruit, the plant is endowed with its constitution and habits, and that these vary according to locality. If he does not mean this I take no exception to it; but if he does - and what other construction can be fairly put on the words " springing up from the seed," - I join issue with him and advance the opinion that it does not teach the facts in the case, but that, contrariwise, the habits and constitution are decided or bestowed during the growth of the seed from which the plant is destined to spring, and that when this seed is once matured it contains wrapped up within it that which stamps indelibly the character of the tree and fruit to grow from it, and that the accident of locality, soil, climate, or other, affects only the development of that character and not the character itself.

It is no part of my attempt to explain the laws which govern the production of varieties, for I believe that those who have bestowed most research into them have the livliest sense of the profundity of their ignorance. All I maintain is, that whatever they may be, their operation is at an end before the germination of the seed. We hear no such notions advanced as to the necessary superiority of native varieties by practical gardeners, in respect to vegetables. They take the utmost pains to procure seed possessing the requisite qualities; but having planted it, do they attempt to change these qualities ? Not at all. They labor diligently, and only to secure the most favorable conditions for their development, leaving the production of new and varied properties to successive generations, from seed, and anticipate such changes only in the seed.

We might ask what is a native ? The child of European emigrants, born the day after arrival here, may be, technically, a native; but is it the less of foreign origin ? The Swedish turnip has been grown here many years, and yet is commonly denominated a foreign variety. The Petre pear grew from a seed matured in England, and because that seed was brought across the water and planted in Pennsylvania it is called a native fruit, and so entitled to consideration as possessing the supposed excellencies of native sort. Do such frivolous distinctions make any difference? Does anybody suppose that scions of the Petre pear sent to England would produce a fruit varying from what would have grown had the seed been originally planted there? - provided, of course, that the conditions of development in each case are equally favorable to the healthy simply, of the tree. Or, that if the seed which produced the Dix pear had been sown in Belgium, and not in Boston, and trees or scions thence brought to Boston, would the tree have proved less adapted to cultivation in Massachusetts, or the fruit worse!

If the current opinion be correct, we ought always to find fruits better where they originate than elsewhere. Is it so ? Can no one recollect instances of fruit, which originated in the Eastern States, being returned from the west so changed for the better as to escape recognition by the most critical judges until scions again set here, and afforded their former facilities for development, produced a well known and easily recognized acquaintance of former years! The Rostiezer is understood to be a seedling of Germany, where it yielded a second or third rate fruit; but trees or scions brought here, produce a fruit so much superior, as to be almost, if not quite, a standard of excellence in its season, and the tree proves as hardy as any native of Maine - and surely we ought to know something about hardiness where the mercury sometimes (rarely, to be sure,) freezes in the thermometer.

Suppose you plant a pear seed at Rochester and it yields a desirable fruit, and you send me scions, which upon trial here prove unable to withstand the severity of winter, what does it prove? If it proves anything, only this - that if the tree had been grown here, it would not have survived to bear fruit, for seedlings are more tender in infancy than at adult age. You send scions to other distant places, and in one it is found of better flavor and in another worse; in one more productive, and in another less. And this only shows that had the tree grown in either of these localities it would have been deemed more or less valuable.

Experience teaches that some fruits are adapted to a wide range of soil and climate, and others restricted to narrow limits. What could there have possibly been in the accidents connected with the growth of the seedling Newtown Pippin, which deprived it of the capability of developing its excellence away from the neighborhood of the Hudson ? or what endowed the seedling Green Gage with the power to exhibit its worth through scores of degrees of longitude, and nobody knows how many of latitude. Nothing at all. The endowment lies further back - viz., in the seed. The proposition here combatted seems to me to have been assumed from the first, rather than proved, and so plausible as to have escaped examination, thus leading many astray.

Was not even Downing somewhat wide of the mark when he penned the following sentence - "That in proportion as a variety has been brought originally from a locality in Europe most nearly similar to that where we would grow it, are its vigor and productiveness retained in our own soil." Now, take the Flemish Beauty, which is named as perhaps the best proved of any foreign variety in this locality, as perfectly hardy, (more so than the Fulton, which is credited to Maine, though the seed grew in Massachusetts, or than the McLaughlin, of which, by the way, nobody can tell the origin, the oldest known trees here being grafted,) perfectly healthy, abundantly productive, vigorous in growth, and the fruit fairer than as grown in Massachusetts and New York, and tell me what are the particular items of similarity between Belgium and Maine which caused this fruit to retain its vigor and productiveness here!

Let me not be understood, by any means, as undervaluing native fruits. Nobody thinks more highly of them, or would more strongly urge their production by every cultivator; only I do not believe in such a rapid manufacture of a native that one generation, or two, or five will develop the highest degree of excellence. There is doubtless a nucleus of truth to which this, that I maintain to be error, has attached itself. Rare is it for any error to obtain extensively which has not truth enough to hold on by.

The same paper, by Downing, from which the above quotation is taken, has the following, which may indicate what it is: "There appears to be something in our new soil, and distinct climate, which imparts new vital powers and gives a new type to the offspring of an old stock in the vegetable races of the other continent." Perhaps a different formula may approximate towards an indication of it, to wit: That there is in the productions of nature a tendency implanted by the benificent Creator to change it into a type specially adapted to the peculiarities of each locality, and this by successive generations from the seed. We see such a tendency with unusual clearness in the case of maize or Indian corn. Plant seed, adapted to one locality, in another at a distance, and year by year we gradually find it varying, until at length it reaches the type best adapted to its new situation. Something analagous to this may prevail among fruits; but whether just so or not, go on to plant seeds and continue to plant, and when you obtain a desirable acquisition, (your judgment being, perhaps, unconsciously warped by parental fondness,) don't spend the remainder of your energy in extolling its wonderful merits as a native, but rejoicing in the accomplishment of one step, go on in the right direction to cross-breed it with others of known merit, and so effect another advance in what may prove a long race before the highest attainable point of excellence is reached.