1847.] Management of Pear Trees. 163 



often fails. I have known IS oat of 20 to succeed in some sea- 

 sons, and the same number to fail in others. It is an uncertain 

 mode; budding is preferable. For double working, you may al- 

 ways graft, that is, if you prefer it, or if your buds fail. Grafts 

 succeed perfectly on the shoot of the pear produced from the 

 quince stock the preceding season. I earth up my trees, to en- 

 courage them to root close up to the junction of the graft with 

 the stock, but not with the view of making the graft root. I wish 

 to avoid this, as the effect of the quince stock is then lost. If 

 you wish for cultivated pears on their own roots, there is much 

 time and labor lost by this mode; for any variety of pear may be 

 layered, and good plants obtained in about two seasons. And 

 now for the last paragraph of your " constant" friend. Can we 

 always find " soil and locality in every respect suitable" to the 

 growth of foreign varieties of pears? Is not our method of plac- 

 ing them against walls and espalier rails, &c., " unnatural?" 

 The peach tree, which in the United States, in a natural state, 

 bears such enormous crops, bears here at least equally fine fruit, 

 but in most " unnatural" places. My root-pruned pear trees, many 

 of them, I have purposely made to contend against nature; in a 

 soil that is naturally death to them I make them flourish. To use 

 the oft-quoted sentence, " A man that can make a blade of grass 

 to grow," &c., is a benefactor to his race, and if I can, by precept 

 and example, enable the numerous occupiers of small gai-dens to 

 grow pears and apples for their dessert nine months in the year, 

 and plums and cherries during the summer, shall I not also be a 

 benefactor in a humble way? I hope so. 



Allow me to advise your correspondent to vi.-;it the Horticultu- 

 ral Gardens at Chiswick; he may there see pear trees of some 

 twenty five years' growth on the quince stock, with roots pro- 

 truding from the stock close to its junction with the graft. Pic- 

 tures of health and fertility, they have borne many bushels of 

 fruit, and yet I have never heard the Fellows of the Horticultural 

 Society complain that they tasted like quinces. Some fine trees 

 of about the same age on the quince are also in the border. These 

 were all removed about two years since, and of course their roots 

 were pruned; on them therefore may be seen the effects of root- 

 pruning. 



I will conclude with the words of Dodman: " a very little care 

 and judicious selection of sorts would insure them pears daily, from 

 the end of July till May. I may add that any garden ten yards 

 square, or even less, will, with the quince stock for pears, the 

 paradise stock for apples, the Cerasus Mahaleb as a stock for 

 cherries, judicious root pruning and surface culture, supply a very 

 ample dessert of delicious fruits. — Thomas Rivers. 



