DWAEF PEAR TREES. 9 



from the grounds, while, in the same situation and under the same 

 treatment, the standard will grow and produce fair, and, in some 

 instances, good specimens of fruit. 



The land upon the south side of the road is generally hilly, and 

 the soil upon the hillsides and in the valleys between is deep and 

 moist, much of it requiring under-draining, which the sloping sur- 

 face renders comparatively easj^ It contains more or less stone, 

 and has a hard clay subsoil on a granite bed. Here the dwarfs 

 seem to have found a congenial soil and location, as they 

 may be found in almost every garden, under all kinds of 

 treatment, as strong and vigorous, and continuing for years to 

 produce their regular crops with as much or more certainty than 

 the standards among which they grow, one grower having several 

 seasons within the past ten years picked one hundred bushels of 

 fine Duchess pears from his dwarf trees. 



I set out upon this kind of soil, in the spring of 1862, fifty pear 

 trees, one half dwarfs. The ground was thoroughly prepared to 

 the depth of two feet. The trees were three years from the bud, 

 small, but not stunted. They had the wood of the previous year 

 well ripened, and good roots, carefully taken from the nursery 

 rows, and not allowed to become dry before being reset. The 

 dwarfs were low worked, or budded near the roots, and set so low 

 as to leave two or three inches of soil above the quince portion of 

 the stock after it became settled around the trunk. These trees 

 made a uniform growth the first season as strong as in subsequent 

 years. The fruit buds were all removed the first two years ; the 

 third year a few specimens were allowed to grow, and since that 

 time the dwarfs have produced regular crops every year, and they 

 have nearly, if not quite, all of them become partially or entirely 

 standard trees, having thrown roots from the pear stock below the 

 surface. The dwarfs gave me the advantage over standards of 

 their early fruiting, and have in the mean time become, partially at 

 least, standard trees, though they retain the fertility, habit of 

 growth, and other properties peculiar to the dwarf, producing those 

 varieties so unreliable and often imperfect, especially in the first 

 years of fruiting, on the standards, with the same regularity and 

 uniform good quality as when wholly dwarfs. 



Though most of the varieties of pears may be grown upon the 

 quince, yet to a few of the more common and desirable kinds this 

 stolk seems especially adapted ; in fact, were it not for the dwarf, 



