156 AMERICAN POMOLOGY. 



DWARFING THE APPLE 



Apples are generally dwarfed by working them upon 

 the French Paradise stock, which is a very diminutive tree 

 or bush, seldom rising more than a few feet high. This 

 is the true stock for those who wish to indulge in the lux- 

 ury of dwarf apple trees. Such are very appropriate for 

 the small garden, or for the specimen grounds of a nur- 

 sery establishment, and they sometimes make beautiful ob- 

 jects in the lawn or among the shrubbery, but they are 

 wholly unsuited for orchard planting, as many a poor de- 

 luded purchaser has found out to his sorrow, a few years 

 after having been beguiled by the smooth-spoken tree ped- 

 dlers, who have sold many thousands through the country 

 to farmers to plant as orchard trees. 



There is a more vigorous stock which has been used for 

 the same purpose, but it possesses much less dwarfing 

 power. It is called the Doucin, or English dwarfing stock. 

 This, however, exerts so little of the dwarfing influence, 

 that at the end of eight or ten years the trees are gener- 

 ally about as large as those worked upon free stocks; but 

 it happens unfortunately that early fruitage, the great ob- 

 ject of dwarfing, is not attained by their use, for they will 

 not have produced any more fruit than the common trees 

 similarly treated. 



BY ROOT PRUNING. Among the many valuable hints 

 which horticulturists have received, with the beautiful flow- 

 ering and other plants, from our antipodes in the " Flow- 

 ery Land," none has been of greater value than the practice 

 of root-pruning. In this art of dwarfing even the large 

 forest trees by mutilations of the roots and by other 

 means, this curious people excel all others, as has fre- 



