Pip Fruits: Pears 95 



sees sometimes exposed for sale, especially in provincial markets, and after 

 ridiculing the cracked and gnarled appearance of many of them, said that 

 by proper spraying all these deformed specimens might have been healthy, 

 shapely fruit. If the trees from which they came had been planted in 

 uncongenial soil, you could no more get healthy fruit from them by any 

 amount of spraying than you could restore health to the victims of con- 

 sumption by applications of the best-advertised soap. 



Mr. Owen Thomas, in The Fruit Garden, gives directions for taking 

 out the natural soil to the depth of 2| ft., where it is too cold and clayey, 

 or too light and poor for Pears, and substituting for it a mixture of turf 

 carefully cut into blocks of the size of bricks, road scrapings, mortar rubble, 

 horse manure, and -in. bones. It scarcely needs pointing out that such 

 procedure would be too expensive for the market grower who desires to 

 make a living from the profits of his operations. There is enough suitable 

 soil in parts of the country where the climate is warm enough for Pear 

 culture to shut out, from the prospect of paying, any plantation where so 

 much elaborate preparation had been necessary. Where a good wall exists 

 running from east to west, it might pay to do something of the kind to get 

 Pears on its south face, and in planning the buildings for a new place such 

 possibility might be taken into consideration. 



Pear Stocks. The planter of Pears has the choice of two stocks upon 

 which they may be budded or grafted, namely, the Pear and the Quince. 

 On the former the many fine specimens of Pear trees seen in old gardens 

 have been grafted. Some of them are of great age, with trunks like forest 

 trees, and still carrying heavy crops of fruit. 



The characteristics of trees on the Pear stock are vigour of growth, 

 deep rooting, and slowness of coming into bearing (although to this last 

 there are exceptions). On the Quince stock the tree grows slowly, makes 

 fruit spurs quickly, and bears finer fruit, as the root tendency is to form a 

 mass of fibrous rootlets near to the surface. Pears on the Quince are able 

 to adapt themselves to a slightly wider range of soils than on the Pear. 

 In planting, the tree on the Quince should have the place where scion and 

 stock unite put 2 in. or so beneath the level of the soil; on the Pear stock 

 the tree must not be put in so deep. The difference of stock sometimes 

 gives rise to a wide divergence in the appearance of the fruit. If specimens 

 of " Durondeau " and " Clapp's Favourite " from trees on the Pear and the 

 Quince stock are placed side by side, it will be sometimes difficult to recog- 

 nize that the fruit from the different stocks are of the same variety. 



When on the Pear stock the wood should be shortened back each winter 

 to about one-third the previous summer's growth, always making the cut 

 just above an outside bud. Care must be taken not to leave more shoots 

 than will be necessary to form the main limbs of the tree. Some varieties, 

 like the " Hessle " and " Emile d'Heyst ", will fall into line readily ; others, 

 like the Jargonelle, will persistently choose the wrong road, and require 

 careful training. After the fourth or fifth year it will only be necessary 

 to take out the "sprew" or spray wood that will come each season along 



