Gardeners certainly experience the branches and roots of crab-apple to be harder than the varieties with thicker bark, larger more downy leaves, and larger fruit. The largest growing apple varieties, however, are not the above mentioned mild varieties, but those which have a pretty close approximation to the crab. We have taken slips from some of the very largest of our pear-trees, and having placed them close to the ground on young stocks, have found they threw out spines and rectangular branching similar to crabs. Those most dissimilar to the crab have thick annual shoots, without any lateral rectangular branching, and very thick bark; they have been gradually bred to this condition by repeated sowing, always choosing the seed of those {284} partaking most of these qualities for resowing, their disposition to vary to mildness being at the same time influenced in some measure by culture and abundant moist nourishment; but these mild varieties, although they throw out a strong annual shoot while young, seldom or never reach to any considerable size of tree, unless they are nourished by crab roots, their own roots being soft and fleshy, and incapable of foraging at much depth or distance. Their branches and twigs as they get old, are also very soft and friable, covered with a thick bark, but the timber of the stem is very little inferior in hardness to crab timber. We ask, if even the fact of these unnaturally tender varieties (obtained by long-continued selection, probably assisted by culture, soil and climate, and which, without the cherishing of man, would soon disappear), being of rather more porous texture of wood, goes any length to prove our author’s assertion? We have paid some attention to the fibre of the genus Pyrus, and find that the Siberian crabs have by far the smallest vessels. Having grafted the large Fulwood upon the smallest Red Siberian Crab, or Cherry-apple, the new wood layers above the junction swelled to triple the thickness of those below. By ingrafting other kinds upon other {285} stocks, we have found the reverse to take place, no doubt owing to those with largest vessels swelling the most, there being the same number of vessels above and below the junction, each corresponding, or being a continuation of the other[57]. But this small Siberian crab, when ingrafted upon a common crab, grew fully as quickly during several years as the Fulwood under the same circumstances; and the timber, though of much finer texture, scarcely exceeded the other in hardness. Sir Henry tells us, that the oak is less durable in Italy and Spain than in England[58]. We tell Sir Henry, that the red-wood pitch-pine from Georgia and the Floridas, on the confines of the torrid zone, is more durable than the red-wood pine from Archangel, on the confines of the frigid zone. But does this fact {286} regarding the oak of the south of Europe, prove any thing regarding the oak of England,—that it will always he deteriorated by