Pears. 



297 



larger limbs, and insert a few grafts, say four or five in all, and com- 

 pel them to form the whole new head, requiring the lapse of many 

 years. A much better and more expeditious mode is to scatter the 

 grafts through the top inserting so many that each one forming a 

 small branch of itself, the whole taken together will make a full top 

 in a few years. 



In order to render the operation plain, Fig. 336 is made to repre- 

 sent the unchanged tree at an age of from ten to twenty years. All 

 the smaller branches are cut away, and those of medium size left dis- 

 tributed at as regular distances as may be. As the tendency of the 

 growth is upwards, the top should be rather worked downwards in this 

 operation, and the side limbs near the bottom allowed a full chance. 

 In the ends of all these shoots some thirty or forty grafts are set, as 

 shown in Fig. 337. Trees of the Virgalieu or Doyenne', which had 

 become worthless by cracking, and which were large enough to bear 



Fig. 336. 



Fig- 337- 



Fig. 338. 



a bushel or two annually, have been entirely changed in this way to 

 better sorts, and yielding three years afterwards larger crops than 

 ever. 



If the labor of inserting so many grafts is too great for ordinary 

 practice, one-third or less may be set, as shown in Fig. 338. 



Dwarf pear-trees of undesirable varieties may be readily changed 

 in this way to other sorts the more easily because they are lower, 



13* 



