28 



Management of Pear Trees. — Breadstuffs. 



Vol. XII. 



enclosed. It is the cheapest and most con- 

 venient fence I ever saw! Tlie house being 

 in the field, the cow can come to the door, 

 the woman can just stoop a little, pass under 

 the pole and she's at the cow's side; the 

 hogs can come under the pole and eat at the 

 door, and the cow cannot disturb them, and 

 the owner can feed them without going out 

 of the house. He keeps no out-houses, not 

 even a pig-pen, or hen-house, consequently 

 no manure accumulates in his way; he ga- 

 thers his corn as he uses it from the field, 

 thereby depriving the rats of a living from 

 him ; his other grain is no trouble to him, 

 for the neighbours' cattle generally gather 

 it on the shares, they take the three-thirds — 

 he is now so completely fixed, he can rest 

 nineteen-twentieths of his time from toil, 

 and which I am told he actually does — hap- 

 py man ! The cause of all this — last win- 

 ter he became a subscriber for the Ohio Cul- 

 tivator; but — he never reads it. 



Root Pruning and the Management of 

 the Pear Tree. 



The very finest pears I have ever seen or 

 tasted have been produced on pear trees 

 grafted on the quince. I use no stocks but 

 the pear and the quince; the former for or- 

 chard trees, or for those who prefer the pear 

 stock; the latter solely for garden trees, 

 principally to form prolific pyramidal trees, 

 for which they are unrivalled both in beauty 

 and fertility. I can illustrate the good ef- 

 fects of root-pruning very forcibly in my 

 specimen orchard. 



About thirty years ago, my father planted 

 some rows of pear trees in a portion of the 

 nursery, then a recent purchase; these were 

 all common sorts of pears, standards, grafted 

 as usual on the pear stock. They grew 

 most luxuriantly for some eight or ten years, 

 when their leaves began to change from 

 their usually vivid green to a light yellow; 

 in a year or two this yellow tint increased 

 till their foliage was really of a bright straw 

 colour; the trees soon after all died, so that, 

 at the end of fifteen years, not a tree was 

 left on this portion of the nursery, the sub- 

 soil of which, I must add, is hard white clay, 

 full of chalk stones; this peculiar soil occu- 

 pies a very small space, not more than a 

 quarter of an acre, as the neighbouring soil 

 is a tender, sandy loam. 



Wiien I came to years of thinking, the 

 untimely fate of these pear trees was often 

 present to n)y mind, for I remembered so 

 vividly with what pleasure I had filled my 

 pockets from them. I at that time also 

 » found that, to be able to know anything 



about pears, I must have a specimen tree of 

 every kind that 1 cultivated. No other but 

 this "pestilent spot" of earth happened to 

 be just the place most eligible as a site for 

 my specimen ground. What could I do? I 

 did not then think of root-pruning, but I 

 thought that I should find some way or 

 other to avert the untimely fate of my trees; 

 I therefore planted them in the usual way, 

 digging the holes about two feet in depth, 

 and mixing some manure and compost with 

 the earth taken from the holes, but leaving 

 the hard clayey subsoil below, to the depth 

 of two feet, untouched. I watched my trees 

 narrowly after four or five years, as I then 

 expected to see traces of the effects of the 

 clay soil upon them. I think some eight 

 years must have passed and gone before 

 their foliage turned yellow. My first thought 

 said, remove them to a different site and 

 soil; second thought, take them up and give 

 them some fresh compost, they will last a 

 few years, and you can then find a good 

 place for them ; third thought, if you can 

 renovate them for a few years by taking 

 them up and replanting, why not do this 

 periodically, so as to keep your trees healthy ; 

 the site is good, — make the soil equally so; 

 fourth thought, what occasion is there to re- 

 move the tree? cut its principal roots, leav- 

 ing those that are fibrous ; and so I became 

 a pruner of roots. 



In my specimen ground are several stand- 

 ard pear trees from eight to ten years old ; 

 these terminate long rows of standards, left 

 to grow as nature dictates, both root and 

 branch, except occasional thinning of their 

 heads. These, it must be recollected, are 

 among my root-pruned specimen trees, a 

 great number of which are from twelve to 

 fifteen years old. They have had their roots 

 pruned three times within these eight years, 

 the last time in December, 1844. They are 

 now full of health, and foliage, and fruit, — 

 in fact, all that I can wish them to be. The 

 standard trees, with roots unpruned, have 

 their leaves yellow, and are, I fear, hasten- 

 ing to death. — Hovey''s Magazine of Horti- 

 culture. 



Prices of Breadstuffs in Europe for 

 thirty years past. 



Hon. Charles Hudson, of this State, in 

 a speech at the last session of Congress, con- 

 densed the following review of the prices of 

 bread-stuffs in Europe for the last thirty 

 years: 



But our purpose is, at present, more par- 

 ticularly to show from Tooke's history of 

 prices, the state of the crops, and the grain 



