CHAP. XLii. bosa'ce.^. PY'RUS. 88.5 



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 d'Agri., and Baudril. in Diet, des Eaiix, &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 56rbus. 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 

 Dictionari/, 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. W^here 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; 



3n 4 



