OF DWARF FRUIT TREE CULTURE. 7 



Or can you realize the feeling of pride, pleasure and satisfaction 

 after training these little trees with your own hand to grow in pots, 

 and when loaded with gorgeous flowers or luscious fruit, when en- 

 tertaining your friends, to place pot and tree to decorate your dining 

 table as a center piece, and surprise them with the result of your 

 own handy work. This is an experience not uncommon in Europe, 

 where it is frequently practiced. The question of health also is 

 worth considering in this connection. Like those little treea produc- 

 ing their fruit so near the ground, secure a degree of health and 

 beauty therefrom not to be obtained otherwise, so the closer the 

 worn-out man or woman can get to work in the ground the happier 

 and better they will feel. 



There was a physician in California who was so alive to this 

 fact that he made his female patients believe he could cure them 

 quicker not by giving them medicine, but by prescribing for the 

 vegetables they consumed. He therefore made them grow their own 

 vegetables, fertilizing them with his medicines, which they were to 

 apply to the plants daily, at stated hours, and in strictly regulated 

 quantities ; he also succeeded in convincing them that his medicines 

 so altered the character of the juices of the plants that they became 

 entirely different from the stuff they could obtain in the market, 

 and the use of them would quickly effect a cure. When he made his 

 professional calls it was not to see his patients, but to examine how 

 the cabbage, lettuce and cauliflowers were progressing. His patients, 

 of course, got well, as might be expected from the change of lolling 

 in rocking chairs and restricted sunlight to working close down to 

 dear old mother earth, in God's bright sunshine. So with you, the 

 care of these dwarf fruit trees will tone you up more than all the 

 nostrums in the drug store. 



To resume, pears are dwarfed by working on quince stock, 

 which enables them to be trained in a variety of forms. Not all 

 pears take kindly to working on the quince, but when they do, they 

 are very satisfactory, and when they do not, we can compel them 

 to do so by the process of double grafting, which is accomplished 

 by first budding or grafting some variety of pear that naturally 

 takes kindly to the quince and then working the rebellious pear on 

 that. This has proved a complete success and the result is all that 

 can be desired. The double grafted pears are always of the highest 

 quality (although a little more expensive). Whether owing to the 

 double influence of the combined sap of the quince modified by pass- 



