228 APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES. 



eligible wlierever it is wished to diminisli the vigour 

 and growth of the tree, and where its durabHity is 

 not thought important. 



"When," adds this great gardener, "much diffi- 

 culty is found in making a tree, whether fructiferous 

 or ornamental, of any species or variety, produce 

 blossoms, or in making its blossoms set when pro- 

 duced, success will probably be obtained in almost all 

 cases by budding or grafting on a stock which is 

 nearly enough allied to the graft to preserve it alive 

 for a few years, but not permanently. The Pear tree 

 affords a stock of this kind to the Apple ; and I have 

 obtained a heavy crop of Apples from a graft which 

 had been inserted in a tall Pear stock only twenty 

 months previously, in a season when every blossom 

 of the same variety of fruit in the orchard was destroy- 

 ed by frost. The fruit thus obtained was externally 

 perfect, and possessed all its ordinary qualities ; but 

 the cores were black and without a single seed ; and 

 every blossom had certainly fallen abortively, if it 

 had been growing upon its native stock. The expe- 

 rienced gardener will readily anticipate the fate of the 

 graft ; it perished in the following winter. The stock, 

 in such cases as the preceding, promotes, in propor- 

 tion to its length, the early bearing and early death 

 of the graft." 



It is sometimes desirable to increase the hardiness 

 of a variety, and grafting or budding appears to pro- 

 duce this effect to a certain extent, not, indeed, by 

 the stock communicating to the scion any of its own 

 power of resisting cold, but by the stock being better 



