SECRETARY'S REPORT. 237 



berries,) as a stock for the pear, has been attended with some 

 success. In my own experience, the Flemish Beauty has often 

 done well on it. Where good stocks can be readily obtained, it 

 is worthy of a more extended trial than has been given it. 



Very diverse accounts are given by cultivators regarding the 

 results obtained by grafting the pear on the Mountain Ash ; [Pijrus 

 Americana of botanists, often called Round-wood.) Most fruit 

 books, when speaking of it, direct that small stocks be grafted near 

 the ground, and some cultivators among us have given me to un- 

 derstand that this practice has succeeded, but although some ten 

 years ago, I worked several thousand in this way, and with twenty 

 or thirty different varieties, I got no trees to succeed for any 

 length of time, nor to come into good bearing at all; while by 

 grafting the limbs of grown trees ten or fifteen feet high and three 

 to six inches in diameter, I have seen them loaded with bushels of 

 fine fruit for several years in succession ; but even such trees may 

 not be expected to succeed for any long term ; a few years of 

 bearing is all that can be expected. 



As with the quince, some varieties succeed well, others but 

 poorly, and others not at all upon the Mountain Ash. The best I 

 have proved are, Flemish Beauty, Fulton and Belle Lucrative. 

 The Bartlett has also done well. Even the White Doyenne, (St. 

 Michael's), which usually cracks so badly, gave good crops on 

 several trees. 



The Amelanchier Canadensis, variously known as Sugar Pear, 

 Juneberry, Shadbush, Serviceberry, &c., has also been tried to 

 some extent as a stock for the pear. I have had no personal 

 experience with it, and from what I had seen or heard, attached 

 little importance to its use. But while visiting some orchards in 

 Penobscot county, during the past summer, I found a very success- 

 ful fruit grower, Mr. JeflFerson Stubbs, of Hampden, had experi- 

 mented considerably with it, and was highly enthusiastic in his 

 anticipations of valuable results. He showed me some trees of 

 great vigor and promise — one of three years growth, grafted at 

 the ground, was fully nine feet high — another, grafted eight or ten 

 years ago, he told me hai brought him fifteen dollars for the fruit, 

 and for premiums on it, at the time when another, of the same 

 variety, (Flemish Beauty,) by its side, and on the pear stock, of 

 the same age and a little larger, had yielded only eighteen pears. 

 He had a dozen or more varieties grafted upon it and of these the 



