96 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 



so destructive as to make their culture unprofitable. Leaf-blight can be 

 controlled by spraying, but other deterrents, as high price of labor and 

 losses from dry summers, added to the cost of spraying, make American- 

 grown stocks expensive. Stocks raised in this country are usually seedlings 

 from imported seed. Seedlings of the Sand pear, P. serotina, and its hybrids 

 have been tried extensively in the South and West to obtain cheap stocks 

 more resistant to pear-blight than the French stock, but they do not seem 

 to be much more resistant to blight, and many of the best varieties do 

 not take on these stocks, so that they are generally considered a failure. 



New types of stocks are needed badly. The ideal stock must be 

 vigorous and hardy; fairly immune to leaf -blight and fire- blight; it must 

 come from a species which seeds freely, and the seedlings from which are 

 uniform; this ideal stock must be adapted to all pear-growing regions in 

 the country; a large percentage of the seedlings must make first-class 

 stocks; the budding season must be long; congeniality with all cultivated 

 varieties must be great or very nearly perfect; the consort of stock and 

 cion must make a long-lived tree. 



Quince stocks are obtained from cuttings or mound-layers. Layering 

 is considered the better method of the two. Stocks from the oriental 

 hybrids, of the Kieffer and Le Conte type, are often grown from cuttings 

 in the South. These are made in the spring from mature wood of the 

 preceding year's growth, and are treated much as are grape and currant 

 cuttings. Long cuttings, a foot in length if possible, should be used. 

 These stocks are of little value for varieties of the common pear, but are 

 better than French stocks for the oriental hybrids, since these, in the South 

 at least, usually over-grow French stocks. Own-rooted trees of these 

 oriental hybrids are often grown from cuttings. 



While of doubtful utility, stocks from other genera may be used for 

 the pear. Some of the thorns are occasionally used as dwarfing stocks. 

 The mountain ash is sometimes used to adapt pears to light sandy soils. 

 Occasionally one hears of pears grafted on sorbus. The pear on the apple 

 is short-lived, but old apple-trees top-worked to pears sometimes give 

 abundant crops for a few years. Apple roots may be used as a nurse for 

 pear cions. To be successful, the pear cion should be long, when, if grafted 

 on short apple-roots and set deeply, the pear sends out roots and eventually 

 becomes own-rooted. 



