THE ORCHARD BEAUTIFUL. 377 



just like the Cherry orchards in the best parts of Kent, where the 

 lambs pick the early grass. But however beautiful such an orchard, 

 clearly it will not 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 make 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 



