STATE HOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 81 



The subject was continued by the reading of the following 

 paper: 



* EFFECT OF STOCK ON CIOX, AND ClON ON STOCK. 



BY C. N". DENNIS, HAMILTON. 



The effect of stock on cion, to be plainly marked, must be pre- 

 ponderant and complete. And then it is effective, as is witnessed 

 by budding pear on quince, when it becomes a dwarf. But if you 

 bud or graft on a root, and plant so that the cion roots of itself, 

 but little effect will be seen from the root, and even after the tree 

 has been dwarfed by growing a top on a complete quince root if 

 the tree is transplanted and planted deep enough to root from above 

 the union, it will even then partly recover and become a half stand- 

 ard. I fear we are apt to run to extremes or jump at conclusions in 

 this as in many other things. J. G. Vaughn, in his paper read before 

 this Society last year, printed on pages 4 to 7, Vol. XX, Illinois Transac- 

 tions, after quoting or recording the longevity of certain seedlings 

 in the Miami Valley and Marion County, says " Who can tell how 

 much of the bitter disappointment and actual loss * * * * 

 is directly attributable to the indiscriminate and almost universal 

 practice of grafting into seedling stock of which literally nothing 

 is known," and further on condemns the procuring of seed from 

 cider mills, etc. 



Now, who does or can know anything about the hardiness of a 

 seedling until it is tested, any more than they can of the quality of 

 fruit it will bear. And again, a good stock is good even if it did 

 come from a cider-mill. And Vaughn concludes by saying "The 

 remedy is obvious. Tree-planters must be willing to pay a fair price 

 for stock that is Avorth planting, and purchase only of nurserymen 

 who will use the seed of none but perfectly sound fruit grown on 

 healthy trees of proved hardiness." Thus it would seem that he 

 would have the whole question of hardiness depend upon the stock 

 and not on cion. If this is so, why is Duchess, Tetofsky, etc., any 

 more hardy than Ben Davis and others, which have been grafted on 

 precisely similar stock, for an equal length of time. But J. V. 

 Cotta, in the next paper in the same volume, says " Doctors disagree." 

 And that he has examined a good many of the dead trees, and in 

 every case found the bark ruptured around the stem, and the inner 

 wood deadened, and sums up that it is the kinds that ripen their 

 wood early that withstand the winter's cold; and his remedy is to 

 top-graft on hardy stems, such as Duchess and Whitney, that ripen 

 early from three and a half to four feet high and not higher, and 

 here remember he claims a hardy stock, grown from an unknown 

 seedling, on which to grow a more tender variety successfully. 



