140 THE TEAR UPON THE QUINCE STOCK. 



not more than half a dozen had rooted, and these 

 very feebly ; while it is well known that this variety 

 succeeds only indifferently npon the Quince. Other 

 facts, however, do tend to confirm this theory. I have 

 seldom found the Duchesse exhibiting any tendency 

 to throw out roots. While of several hundred of 

 other varieties, five or six years old, removed at the 

 same time with the Bartletts above-mentioned, more 

 than half had rooted from the pear wood, and the 

 character of the roots was somewhat striking. When 

 a wild or seedling pear is budded and planted in the 

 fruit grounds, its tendency to form long, straggling 

 roots, almost destitute of fibres, unless root-pruned or 

 retransplanted, is well-known ; but every one of the 

 roots from the pear wood above the quince stock of 

 these trees, was provided with such masses of fibres, 

 that it was nearly impossible to free them from the 

 adliering soil. Eemarkable as is this faculty of fibrous 

 rooting of the Quince, it is much more surprising in 

 the Pear, when grown on the quince stock. Many 

 roots, three or four feet long will be found, fringed 

 with fibres throughout their entire length, and in such 

 masses as to render it necessary to greatly thin them, 

 when reset in the ground, to allow them to be sepa- 

 rated by particles of soil. In some cases, I have found 

 the quince root entirely superseded and cast off". In 

 others, the double root seemed to be in perfect har- 

 mony, and both parts thrifty and vigorous. In most 

 cases the pear root had been formed on one side of 

 the tree, and rapidly radiating and swelling at the 

 junction, had usurped the entire ground, and held the 

 tree firmly and strongly in the soil. To test the fact 



