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Pears are worked on one of two stocks, either common pear for 

 standards, or quince for dwarfs. The result of our experience has 

 also here been that we have discarded dwarfs, that is to say pears 

 grown on quince, our reason being that the advocates of the quince 

 stock for pear claim that whereas a pear on pear stock will take 

 six or seven years to come into bearing, a pear on quince will only 

 take three or four ; our experience of this stock does not bear out 

 this result ; we will, mention an instance and could mention 

 several of this. Sir' James Sivewright has at Lourensford, an 

 orchard of probably 1,000 pears of different varieties on quince ; 

 these have stood five years and have not yet borne, and are not 

 carrying any fruit this season, whereas we could show orchards 

 of the same age on pear that are bearing a paying crop of fruit. 



We strongly advise planters to leave the pear on quince 

 well alone, unless they have seen much better results than we 

 have. If you are a commercial planter don't be led to plant on 

 this stock without having your mind set at rest by facts in your 

 immediate neighbourhood on similar soil. 



Peaches. We can with confidence say that so far as South 

 Africa is concerned, peach stock for peaches is the only stock 

 worth planting ; we say this not dogmatically, but after wide 

 experiments with other stocks. 



It is of course well known to those who study fruit tree plant- 

 ing that peaches will not thrive on wet, badly drained spots ; our 

 soils, speaking generally, here are patchy and in an orchard of a 

 few acres spots low lying and wet are often found ; we recognizing 

 this have made thorough experiments in the use of the myrobo- 

 lan and St. Julian Stock for peaches, these latter stocks being 

 more suited to such soils, but we have met with no success what- 

 ever, and we have spent considerable time and money with the 

 object of trying to overcome the matter, and as we say have failed. 

 So far as it can be determined the main reason is that in this 

 country peaches will not thrive on plum stock, they will always 

 prove unsatisfactory from every point of view. 



In America the Almond stock is used to a fair extent on very 

 dry soils for carrying the peach ; we have also tried this and find 

 the result unsatisfactory. Therefore we would say to intending 

 planters if you have not got a site for your orchard which can be 

 thoroughly drained or which is not naturally of that character, 

 don't plant peaches. 



Apricots. Our experience here is that again the peach root is 

 the reliable root. Years ago we discarded the apricot root, as the 

 growth we found under different conditions was so unsatisfactory. 

 However, in heavy ' soil the inyrobolan root is safe to use, all the 

 varieties of apricots we have tried doing thoroughly well on this 

 root in heavy moist soil. 



Plums. The relative value of the peach and the myrobolan as 

 a stock for both domestic and Japanese plums and also prunes has 

 been a much debated question now for the last two years. We 

 simply repeat our experience with deductions. 



