196 DWARF PEAKS. 



stocks are valuable, budding is to be preferred to grafting, 

 because it may be repeated in case of failure. For the same 

 reason, root-grafting the pear is not adopted, especially as 

 slightly unfavorable causes are apt to produce far greater 

 failures of such grafts than with the apple. 



Propagation by Layers, giving every tree roots of its own 

 kind, is easily effected by bending down a vigorous and 

 thickly branched tree, and making layers of every good 

 shoot. In two years at furtherest they will furnish well 

 rooted young plants. 



DWARF PEAKS. 



For orchard culture, and in most parts of the country where 

 the pear flourishes with great vigor and proves highly pro- 

 ductive, pear stocks will doubtless always be found greatly 

 preferable to all others. The advantages of a dwarf growth 

 on dissimilar stocks, have been already pointed out under 

 the head stocks. Such trees are not so long-lived as on 

 pear roots, and they require more thorough and fertile 

 culture, and care in pruning. But they have some import- 

 ant advantages, such as coming soon into bearing, occupy- 

 ing less than a fifth part of the ground, thriving in many 

 soils where pear stocks will not, and in a few instances im- 

 proving the quality of the fruit. 



The stocks for dwarfs, which have been more or less used,, 

 are the mountain ash, the apple, the thorn, and the quince. 



Nearly all the experiments with the mountain ash have 

 sooner or later proved failures. Budded or grafted upon 

 apple seedlings, pears sometimes make a feeble growth for 

 a few years ; but unless the grafts themselves throw out 

 roots, by planting beneath the surface, they sooner or later 

 perish. It sometimes happens that grafts of a few varieties 

 inserted at standard height, grow and bear for a series of 

 years. But experiments of this sort are not to be recom- 

 mended, the few instances of success only forming excep- 

 tions to a general rule. The thorn has been extensively 

 used in England, and to some extent in this country, with 

 considerable success. But all other kinds of dissimilar stocks 

 have given way to the quince, which is regarded as much 

 superior for general use to any other. Of the different sorts 

 ol quince, the Angers quince has proved the best. 



