Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Fruit Manual: Containing the Descriptions Synonymes of the Fruits and Fruit Trees Commonly Met With in the Gardens Orchards of Great Britain, With Selected Lists of Those Most Worthy of Cultivation Fifteen years ago I published a Manual of Fruits, which at the time included most of the varieties found in nurseries and private gardens. This being favourably received, the whole impression was sold within a twelvemonth, and I was repeatedly urged to prepare a new edition. About that time numerous new varieties of fruits were introduced to British gardens, and it was therefore necessary that their merits should be fairly tested before a new edition could be published of a work professing to furnish information respecting the fruits and fruit trees commonly cultivated in this country. During the interval that has elapsed I have examined the greater number of the new, and many of the older varieties not formerly included, and I am now enabled to present a work more complete and useful than I could have done had I entered upon it at an earlier period. In the present volume I have not attempted to enumerate all the varieties of fruits known to exist in the country, but to describe those only which either are in cultivation, or are worthy of being cultivated for their superior merits. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.