96 THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 
so destructive as to make their culture unprofitable. Leaf-blight can be 
controlled by spraying, but other deterrents, as high price of labor and 
losses from dry summers, added to the cost of spraying, make American- 
grown stocks expensive. Stocks raised in this country are usually seedlings 
from imported seed. Seedlings of the Sand pear, P. serotina, and its hybrids 
have been tried extensively in the South and West to obtain cheap stocks 
more resistant to pear-blight than the French stock, but they do not seem 
to be much more resistant to blight, and many of the best varieties do 
not take on these stocks, so that they are generally considered a failure. 
New types of stocks are needed badly. The ideal stock must be 
vigorous and hardy; fairly immune to leaf-blight and fire-blight; it must 
come from a species which seeds freely, and the seedlings from which are 
uniform; this ideal stock must be adapted to all pear-growing regions in 
the country; a large percentage of the seedlings must make first-class 
stocks; the budding season must be long; congeniality with all cultivated 
varieties must be great or very nearly perfect; the consort of stock and 
cion must make a long-lived tree. 
Quince stocks are obtained from cuttings or mound-layers. Layering 
is considered the better method of the two. Stocks from the oriental 
hybrids, of the Kieffer and Le Conte type, are often grown from cuttings: 
in the South. These are made in the spring from mature wood of the 
preceding year’s growth, and are treated much as are grape and currant 
cuttings. Long cuttings, a foot in length if possible, should be used. 
These stocks are of little value for varieties of the common pear, but are 
better than French stocks for the oriental hybrids, since these, in the South 
at least, usually over-grow French stocks. Own-rooted trees of these 
oriental hybrids are often grown from cuttings. 
While of doubtful utility, stocks from other genera may be used for 
the pear. Some of the thorns are occasionally used as dwarfing stocks. 
The mountain ash is sometimes used to adapt pears to light sandy soils. 
Occasionally one hears of pears grafted on sorbus. The pear on the apple 
is short-lived, but old apple-trees top-worked to pears sometimes give 
abundant crops for a few years. Apple roots may be used as a nurse for 
pear cions. To be successful, the pear cion should be long, when, if grafted 
on short apple-roots and set deeply, the pear sends out roots and eventually 
becomes own-rooted. 
