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cates of the quince stock for pear claim that whereas a pear on 

 pear stock will take six or seven years to come into bearing, a 

 pear on quince will only take three or four ; our experience of 



-tock does not bear out this result; we will mention an in- 

 stance, and could mention several of this. Sir James Sivewright 

 has at Lourensford an orchard of probably 1,000 pears of differ- 

 ent varieties on quince ; these have stood twenty-one years, and 

 have not yet borne satisfactorily, and whereas we could show 

 orchards of the same age on pear that are bearing a heavy pay- 

 ing crop of fruit. 



\Ye strongly advise planters to leave the pear on quince well 

 alone, unless they have seen much better results than we have. 

 If you are a commercial planter don't be led to plant on this 

 stock without having your mind set at rest by facts in your im- 

 mediate neighbourhood on similar soil. 



Peaches. We can with confidence say that so far as South 

 Africa is concerned, peach stock for peaches is the only stock 

 worth planting; we say this not dogmatically, but after wide ex- 

 periments with other stocks. 



It is, of course, well known to those who study fruit tree 

 planting that peaches will not thrive on wet, badly drained spots ; 

 our soils, speaking generally, here are patchy and in an orchard 

 of a few acres spots low lying and wet are often found ; recog- 

 nising this, we have made thorough experiments in the use of 

 the myrobolan and St. Julian Stock for peaches (these latter 

 stocks being ^more suited to such soils), but we have met with 

 110 success whatever, and though we have spent considerable time 

 any money with the object of trying to overcome the matter, we 

 have failed. So far as it can be determined the main reason is 

 that in this country peaches will not thrive on plum stock, they 

 will always prove unsatisfactory from every point of view. 



In America the Almond stock is used to a fair extent on very 

 dry ^oils for carrying the peach, and we find this stock has proved 

 suitable in extremely dry parts of South Africa, such as Prieska 

 and Kenhardt. 



Apricots. ( )ur experience here is that again the peach root 

 is the reliable root. Years ago we discarded the apricot root, as 

 the growth we found under different conditions was so unsatisfac- 

 tory. However, in heavy soil the myrobolan root is safe to use, 

 all the varieties of apricots we have tried doing thoroughly well 

 on this root in heavy moist soil. 



Plums. The relative value of the peach and the myrobolan 



-lock for both domestic and Japanese plums and also prunes 

 has been a much debated question now for many years. We will 

 simply repeat our experience with deductions. 



Of the domestic plum? very few do well worked direct on to 

 peach root. Most of the well-known varieties make so imperfect 



