498 THE MAGAZINE Or HORTICULTURE. 



PEARS ON THE QUINCE. 



BY L. E. B. 



Allow me to send you a few remarks suggested by our 

 late conversation about the question of dwarf pear trees. I 

 do not intend them for publication, but you are at perfect 

 liberty to make such use of these suggestions as you deem 

 proper. I do not wish to enter into a polemic with some 

 gentlemen, whom I esteem much in all other respects, but 

 whose opinion I can neither admit nor allow to pass unheed- 

 ed. This is the land of free discussion, at least in our pur- 

 suits, and I hope nobody will take oiFence at my taking up 

 the cause of the useful and much abused quince. 



A gentleman, among others, after stating some experiments 

 in which sonie of his quince trees succeeded very well, others 

 not, accounts for the opposite and contradictory result by 

 considering the Cydonia or quince tree unfit for our climate, 

 being a native of Japan. If that is true, why did more than 

 one half of his dwarf trees, though, as he states himself, 

 badly managed and neglected in former years, bring him such 

 handsome profits as nearly a thousand dollars a year ? With 

 his permission, this resembles much abusing your cow for the 

 milk she gives. 



Before writing his article, I wish that learned gentleman 

 had taken the trouble to ascertain, 1st. Whether all his 

 quince-grafted trees were on the same stock, the Angers or 

 Orleans, the only ones now in use in our nurseries ; 2d. 

 Whether all were planted according to the rule prevailing in 

 Europe, so as to have the bud from two to four inches below 

 the level surface of the soil ; 3d. Whether all were pruned 

 in the same way, and planted with the same care. 



To the first question he gives the reply, by stating that the 

 two different lots were obtained from two different nurseries. 

 Can we not surmise that the unsuccessful trees were on the 

 now indigenous quince, and the thriving trees on the improved 

 or Angers ? 



But to the main point. If the Cydonia or quince is unfit- 

 ted for our climate because all the way from Japan, why do 



