Fruit and Fruit-Trees of America, Pomological Manual, and Kenrick's American Orchardist Bed Magnum Bonum, of some collections.

Several fine fruits have been received in this country from abroad without names, and notwithstanding the numerous and extensive importations of varieties for many years back, no one has been able to identify them. Such are the Golden Beurre of Bilboa Pear, an excellent and popular sort now considerably disseminated; the Brad-thaw or Large Black Imperial Plum; the Great Bigarreau Cherry. The Duane's Purple Plum and several others are in the same category. It is quite possible, however, that all these fruits will yet be identified, as we are every year coming into closer communication with European pomologists, and becoming more familiar with their collections. Practically it is perhaps of no very great importance, yet it would be advantageous to penological science, and more satisfactory to the intelligent cultivator, were we able to trace the history and origin of these fruits.

The Duane's Purple* is a large and beautiful fruit, of good but not first rate quality. The tree is a free and moderately stout grower, with very distinctly marked gray woolly shoots, and bears the most abundant crops. It is cultivated, or was cultivated a few years ago, at Albany as the Bed Magnum Bonum, a very different fruit in every respect Mr. Elliot gives the English, Pond's Seedling as a synonym, but for what reason we do not know. We are not aware that these two varieties have ever been confounded. The English "Pond's Seedling" or Fort Hill Plum is a very large, oval, showy, reddish variety, like the Bed Magnum Bonum, but has no resemblance to Duane's Purple. This latter variety is now classed with Smith's Orleans, Imperial Gage, Washington, Coe's Golden Drop, Lombard, and other free-growing, productive, valuable varieties for general cultivation, though not ranking in quality with a Green Gage or a Jefferson. We copy from the Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America Mr. Downing's excellent description:

Duane's Purple French

A superb-looking purple fruit of the largest size, and of very fair quality, - occasionally, in warm dry seasons, first rate. It was imported from France by Jas. Duane, Esq., of Duanesburgh, N. Y., but without a name, and is now generally known under the present title. We have seen this fruit, about Albany, confounded with the Purple Magnum Bonum. The tree is easily known by the gray appearance of the wood, and large leaves, which are unusually woolly on the under surface. It is a highly attractive dessert fruit, ripening rather before the Plum season, and bearing well.

"Branches - very downy. Fruit - very large, oval or oblong, considerably swollen on one side of the suture. Skin - reddish purple in the sun, but a very pale red in the shade, sparingly dotted with yellow specks, and covered with lilac bloom. Stalk - three-fourths of an inch long, slender, set in a narrow cavity. Flesh - amber-colored, juicy, sprightly, moderately sweet, adheres partially to the stone. Ripens with the Washington, (or a little before,) about the 10th of August".

* See frontispiece.