CHAP. XLII. ROSACEAE. PY‘RUS. 885 
varieties cultivated for their fruit are budded or grafted on stocks of different 
kinds. For the poorer soils, and exposed situations, stocks of the wild pear 
of the given locality must, doubtless, be the best, because they must be 
the hardiest : but it is found from experience, and it is consistent with phy- 
siological principles, that, on good soils, or where the pear is to be cultivated 
entirely as a fruit tree, both the tree and the fruit will grow larger when the 
stock is a seedling pear of some vigorous-growing variety. (See Bosc in 
N. Cours @ Agri., and Baudril. in Dict. des Eaux, &c.) Such stocks, it has 
also been found by the French gardeners, throw the scions sooner into 
bearing than wild stocks; though it is reasonably conjectured that the trees 
will not prove quite so durable. When dwarf trees are required, the pear is 
grafted on the quince, the medlar, or the thorn; or on the mountain ash, or 
some other species of Sorbus. It grows remarkably well on the common 
hawthorn; though, unless the graft be made under ground, it does not form a 
very safe and durable tree; because, as the scion increases faster in diameter 
than the stock, it is liable to be blown off. When the graft, however, is 
made close to the surface of the ground, or immediately under the surface, 
the root swells in nearly the same proportion as the scion, and there is no 
danger of the tree being blown down, or of its not being sufficiently long- 
lived. In the Fountain Bridge Nursery, near Edinburgh, which was occupied, 
about the middle of the last century, by Gordon, the author of the Gardener’s 
Dictionary, there were standards, in 1806, with trunks above a foot in dia- 
meter, and heads in proportion. These, judging from the suckers that used to 
rise up in the ground round the base of their trunks, were all grafted on the 
common thorn. Where hawthorn hedges are planted on good soils, and 
grow vigorously, we would recommend, when the hedge, in the routine 
course of management, is cut over by the ground, grafting a stump, or root, 
with a pear scion at every 20 ft. In this case, supposing the stock to be five 
or six times the diameter of the scion, the single shoot of pear produced the 
first year by the scion would be such as entirely to overtop the numerous 
shoots of the same year produced by the adjoining thorn stumps; and, 
by careful removal of suckers, and training for a year or two, the hedge 
would soon be furnished with handsome vigorous standard pear trees. This 
we conceive to be the only practical mode of introducing standard pear trees 
into a hedge already some years planted; but when, on planting a hedge, 
it is determined to have standard pear trees in it, we would recom- 
mend standards on wild pear stocks to be procured from the nursery, and 
planted at the same time as the hedge plants. There is no such thing as 
accomplishing, with success, the introduction of young trees among old 
established trees, either in a close hedge, or in a close wood. In France, 
and in some parts of England, wild pear trees and crabs rise up accidentally 
in the seed-beds of hawthorns, in the nurseries ; and are, consequently, planted 
out with the thorns in the hedgerows, where they become trees, and produce 
fruit; from which source some good new varieties have been obtained in 
both countries. This naturally suggests the idea of planting pear and crab 
stocks in a hedge along with hawthorn plants, in a regular and systematic 
manner ; and grafting or budding these with suitable varieties, when they 
have attained sufficient height for becoming standards. This, though not 
the most rapid mode, is yet by far the most economical, of introducing fruit 
trees in hedgerows. We would, therefore, strongly recommend those who 
are favourable to our views in regard to the introduction of fruit trees in 
-hedges, to introduce into every newly planted hedge a stock, either of pear, 
apple, cherry, or plum, at every 20 ft., 30 ft., or 40 ft. distance, according to 
circumstances, and to cause these to be trained up with single stems, and 
grafted or budded when of the proper height. Even if these plants were not 
trained up to single stems, or grafted, they could never do any harm to the 
hedge ; because it is well known, that very good hedges have been formed of 
crabs, wild pears, and wild plums or damsons. The oldest British writers on 
husbandry, such as Standish, Tusser, &c., have recommended this practice ; 
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