FRUIT committee's REPORT. 45 



grafting of more than one variety upon the same tree is attempted, but thia is 

 a vicious practice, and should be carefully avoided. The different varieties 

 of the pear differ so essentially in their habits, growth, and vigor, some being 

 upright, some diffuse, some strong, and others feeble, that to graft more 

 than one variety on the same stock is almost to insure that the strong will 

 stifle the weak, or if not, that at all events a most unsightly tree will be the 

 result. 



Although grafting is an operation easy and safe in its application, yet 

 there is a limit to its practice in repeating it more than twice upon the same 

 tree. A tree once grafted may be regrafted with a different variety with 

 perhaps a reasonable expectation of success ; but if this second grafting is 

 not satisfactory in its results the operation cannot, it is believed, be performed 

 a third time without being, in the end, very unsatisfactory in its consequpnces, 

 and it would be, in most cases, a matter of personal preference to dig up a tree 

 that has been twice grafted, supplying its place with another, to attempt graft- 

 ing for the third time. The graft and the stock both, perhaps, exercise mu- 

 tually some influence the one upon the other, and it would probably be de- 

 sirable that both should be of the same general character ; this however it 

 would be always difficult and often impossible to ascertain, and consequently, 

 must be, as it generally is, disregarded, the strong being grafted oh the weak 

 and the weak on the strong, haphazard. So far as a slight personal observa- 

 tion justifies the forming an opinion, it is believed that, so far as the character 

 of the tree is concerned, a much greater influence is exercised upon the 

 stock by the graft, than upon the graft by the stock ; that a graft of a strong 

 growing, vigorous variety, placed upon a feeble stock, will very probably 

 make in the end a vigorous tree, while a scion of a feeble growing variety, 

 grafted on a vigorous stock, will be very likely to dwarf and make stunted 

 the stock. In some instances a want of congeniality between the graft and 

 stock, and consequently evil consequences thereof that have come under 

 notice, has been strikingly manifested ; indeed, in the cases alluded to, tend- 

 ing to show a want of congeniality between the graft and any stock. The 

 Cross Pear, naturally of a feeble growth and habit, repeatedly grafted and 

 budded upon the limbs of strong growing thrifty trees, has invariably so dwarfed 

 and made unthrifty the trees upon which it was grafted, after a year or two 

 of growth, that they became of no value. And in a still more striking man- 

 ner the Collins Pear, grafted on the limbs of a healthy long established tree, 

 after growing for a year or two, not only ceased to thrive, but actually killed, 

 at first the limbs on which it was grafted, and eventually the whole tree. If 

 this was an isolated instance, the supposition would be that the defect was 

 in the stock, and that the failure of the stock caused the perishing of the 

 gratis, not that the grafts killed the stock ; but as the same result has happened 

 in repeated instances on different trees, this supposition is rendered improbable, 

 and facts go to prove, in the case of the Collins Pear, such a want of con- 

 geniality, between its gratis and the stocka on which it was tried, as to kill 



