54 TIIK PEAR AS REGARDS ITS STOCK. 



ficially, coDtaining' all the essentials for quince culture. Per- 

 manency of moisture, an unctuous feel in the fingers, together 

 with a liberal amount of fine sand, seemed to offer the most 

 ready means of carrying out tlie object. Permanency of 

 moisture was in tlie main represented by using a fat or unctuous 

 loam to the extent of a half-component part. The unctuous, or 

 perhaps I may say soapy texture, I imparted by a liberal addition 

 of very old vegetable matter, containing old tan, peat, and 

 some rich old humus ; sand added afterwards. Some six barrows- 

 ful were blended, and formed a station 18 inches deep by 6 feet 

 square, on a brick or stone substratum ; the surface of the soil 

 merely tlie ordinary ground level. I planted a Beurre d'Arem- 

 berg — or at least it is either that or Glout Morceau — on a 

 quince, and the success has been most complete. The tree has 

 annually borne abundantly fruit of very excellent flavour, and 

 melting ; indeed, one season it surpassed in flavour even the 

 Winter. 



I hold it good pear culture to make a practice annually of 

 selecting the shortest jointed and most mature annual shoots, and 

 tying tliem down to the principal leaders in the June or July 

 summer-pruning. The old and mechanical spurring system is 

 surely exploded by this time ; it has proved a most fallacious 

 course of practice for centuries, and the gardener who adheres 

 yet tenaciously to it must be much attaclied to mere prescription. 

 I do not say, spur not at all. No. When natural spurs con- 

 tinue to form, and advance into blossom buds, by all means 

 preserve them, but do not entirely rely on them. 



Notwithstanding the eligibility of the quince for a dwarfing 

 system, I still think that the results of grafting on the pear 

 stock would be very different, providing means were taken from 

 the very seed-bed to* check the tendency to forked and deep 

 roots by early and frequent transplanting. Plenty of fibrous 

 surface roots thus obtained would, without any further difficulty, 

 place the stock under an amount of control which would in all 

 probability render it equivalent to the quince as to dwarfing 

 matters ; whilst for the most part any ordinary soil would suit it, 

 which cannot be said of the quince. 



The great tendency to produce breast-wood is the main evil 

 to be avoided ; indeed, let any one only observe the old orchard 

 pear-tree of possibly many centuries. I have witnessed many, 

 very many, whicli have borne some ten to twenty bushels of 

 perfect fruit annually, and which have never within my know- 

 ledge produced above four or five inches in length of young 

 wood each summer— in fact, I know of some in which it is 

 scarcely possible to notice any elongation at all. The joints, 

 moreover, are so close together that four or five may be found 



