THE ORCHARD BEAUTIFUL. 267 



give us the variety of form and beauty found in the mixed orchard, 

 in which Cherry, Apple, Plum, Pear, Medlar, Quince, Walnut, and 

 Mulberry take a place ; there also the various interesting trees 

 allied to our fruit trees might come in, such as the true and 

 common Service tree, Almond, Cornelian Cherry, and Crab. 



Where we made use of grafted trees and generally there is no 

 choice in the matter we should always in the orchard use the most 



natural stock It is much better to graft Pear 

 Grafting. trees on the wild Pear than on the Quince, a 



union harmful to the Pear on many soils, If we 

 could get the trees on their own roots without any grafting it would 

 often be much better, but we are slaves to the routine of the trade. 

 The history of grafting is as old as the oldest civilisations its best 

 reason, the rapid increase of a given variety. In every country one 

 or two fruit trees predominate, and are usually natives of the country 

 like the Apple in Northern Europe and the Olive in the South. 

 When men found a good variety of a native fruit they sought to 

 increase it in the quickest way, and so having learned the art of 

 grafting, they put the best varieties on wild stems in hedgerows, or 

 dug up young trees and grafted them in their gardens. The practice 

 eventually became stereotyped into the production of the nursery 

 practice of grafting many varieties of fruit trees on the same stock, 

 often without the least regard to the lasting health and duration of 

 the trees so grafted. In some cases when we use the wild form of 

 the tree as a stock for the orchard tree we succeed ; but grafting is 

 the cause of a great deal of the disease and barrenness of our 

 orchards. Where we graft, it is well to graft low; that is to say, 

 in the case of cider Apples, for example, it is much safer and better 

 to take a tree grafted close to the ground than grafted standard 

 high, as the high graft is more liable to accident and does not make 

 so fine a tree. In the orchard the good old practice of sowing the 

 stone or pip of a fine fruit now and then may also be followed with 

 interest. 



Even in the good fruit counties like Kent one may see in dry 

 years orchards starved from want of water, and the turf beneath 



almost brown as the desert. Where manure is 

 Starved orchards, plentiful it is well to use it as a mulch for such 



trees, but where it is not, we may employ various 

 other materials for keeping the roots safe from the effects of drought. 

 Not only the tree roots want the water, but the roots of the 

 competing grass suck the moisture out of the soil The competition 

 of the grass could be put an end to at once, and the trees very 

 much nourished, by the use of any easily found mulching from 

 materials which are often abundant in a country place. Among the 



