Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/98

 quality, in a variety which perhaps possesses few others to recommend it.

""The most effective method," says Mr. Knight, p. 42, "I have been able to discover, of obtaining such fruits as vegetate very early in the Spring, has been by introducing the farina of the Siberian crab" (a plant which still retains, in England, the habit which it possessed in its native clime, of blossoming on the first appearance of spring), "into the blossom of a rich and early apple, and by transferring, in the same manner, the farina of the apple to the blossom of the Siberian crab. The leaf and habits of many of the plants I have thus obtained, possess much the character of the apple, whilst they vegetate as early in the spring as the crab of Siberia, and possess, at least, an equal power of bearing cold; and I possess two plants of this family, which are quite as hardy as the most austere crab of our woods; and are, I think, capable of affording ciders of much greater merit than any which have yet existed.""

In the large quotations, which I have thus taken the liberty of making from Mr. Knight, the process he recommends, as well as the principles on which it is founded, are so perspicuously described, that it would be presumption in me to attempt adding any thing in explanation; but, as many may be