YALE AGRICULTURAL LECTURES. 61 



out a certain number of stool or mother plants, in a deep, rich, 

 well-prepared soil ; when they have stood one season, cut them 

 all off close to the ground. The next season they will produce 

 strong, smooth shoots, which the following year may be earth 

 ed up, half their length, as celery is earthed up, and in the 

 fall they will have rooted well enough to bear separation 

 from the parent plant. If left on during winter, the frost 

 will ruin them. Such stock as these may be set in nursery 

 row the next spring, and budded the same season. Only 

 two crops of shoots can be taken from the same stool, and 

 a good dressing of manure is necessary to get even the second. 

 Pears propagated on small, weak quince stocks are worthless. 

 In budding or grafting quince stocks, it should always be done 

 near the ground, so that the whole of the quince may be set 

 under ground without being too deep. Root-grafting, although 

 still an open question among nurserymen, Mr. Barry believes 

 to be, if properly performed, as good a mode for propagating 

 the apple, and more especially all the strong growing sorts, as 

 any other in use. It has been sadly abused, and thus been 

 brought into disfavor with bunglers and their victims. 



Management of Young Trees. Trees are too closely plant 

 ed, as a general thing ; three and a half feet between the rows, 

 and three or four inches between the plants, is too little space 

 to give either air, light, hardiness of constitution, spread of 

 root, or strength of top. For apples, pears, or other trees 

 which are to remain two years in the nursery row, the distance 

 from tree to tree should never be less than eighteen inches for 

 standards, and twenty-four inches for pyramids ; and even at 

 such distance the pruning-knife is to be freely used. Country 

 people are too apt to value a nursery tree in proportion to its 

 height, rather than its strength and proportions a too common 

 and fatal mistake. Cutting back should be freely practised, 

 and the leader or main stem should be pruned as well as the 

 side branches, else one will get a tall and ill-proportioned tree. 

 An enormous amount of money is annually lost to tree pur- 



