1886.] TRANSACTIONS. 13 



wine into old bottles, the stint is too great for a growth that has 

 passed maturity. Instead of the most thrifty, vigorous stock in 

 their orchard, people who wish to possess and perpetuate a new 

 and choice fruit, are too apt to graft into a tree that lias become 

 prematurely worn out by excessive fruition. Anotlicr point 

 upon wliich stress may be laid : the suitability of stock and graft. 

 The writer does not believe that an early winter variety can be 

 grown with permanent success upon a tree whose natural habit 

 is summer-bearing. In other words, — his contention is that the 

 Glou Mor9cau or Anjou should be worked upon the Vicar, a 

 close, hard-grained wood, and not upon the Belle Lucrative or 

 Boussoc. If ^^ shii'dla similihus curantnr^'' — why should not 

 the character of the parentage control the genesis of a variety 

 or species ? 



In the judgment of the writer, founded upon long years 

 of observation, too little care is used in selecting the proper 

 stock to graft. We see and taste a new variety, novel to us at 

 any rate, and forthwith we must insert a scion in the first tree 

 that comes handy. The Bartlett bears about as soon as its roots 

 get fairly settled in place. The Bosc or Urbaniste yield their 

 superb fruit to the patient waiters of twenty yeai-s. The Bart- 

 lett grows like a weed, and produces like a rabbit. The Bosc 

 uprcars itself deliberately; supplying, when it does bear, a sure 

 crop of quite uniform excellence and quantity. What affinity 

 have such varieties for each other ? Their wood is of different 

 grain ; the sap does not start in them simultaneous^ ; their pe- 

 riods of ripening are months apart. These varieties have been 

 named hap-hazard. But a compulsory union between them 

 would be no more incongruous or unnatural than those that are 

 continually attempted. The members of a Society that exists to 

 "promote the Science and improve the Practice of Horticulture" 

 should never " plough with an ox and ass together." Who can 

 estimate the number of varieties that have been enfeebled in con- 

 stitution or have been wholly lost to cultivation, by such irrational 

 practices ? A suitable relationship between scion and stock 

 ought to be as rigidly enforced in Pomology, as an adequate 

 foundation for the superstructure, in building. 



