V..] 



PROPAGATION. 



143 



They may be put upon large trees, which are already bearing ; so 

 that, by these arts, you may have numerous sorts of fruit upo;i the 

 same tree ; but, what I am to treat of here is the manner of rais- 

 ing young trees ; and, to have these, there must be stocks pre- 

 viously prepared to receive the grafts or the buds ; therefore, I now 

 proceed to ^give directions for the making of this previous prepa- 

 ration or provision. Under the name of the different fruits, I shall 

 speak of the sort of stocks suitable to each ; but I may observe 

 here, that the stocks for apples are crabs, or apples ; that the 

 stocks for pears are pears, quinces, or hawthorn ; and that the 

 stocks for peaches and nectarines are plums, peaches, nectarines, 

 or almonds; that the stocks for apricots are plums or apricots: 

 that the stocks for plums are plums ; that the stocks for cherries 

 are cherries ; and that the stocks for medlars or pears are hawthorn. 

 In many of the cases, stocks may be raised from suckers, and they 

 are so raised ; but never ought to be so raised. Suckers are shoots 

 that come up out of the ground, starting from the roots of trees, 

 and are very abundant from pears and plums, and sometimes from 

 cherries. They run to wood, and produce suckers themselves in 

 abundance, which trees do not that are raised from seeds, cut- 

 tings, or layers. Suckers, therefore, never ought to be used to 

 graft or bud upon ; for if you graft a pear, for instance, upon a pear 

 sucker, the tree begins to send out suckers almost immediately ; 

 and, in America, where this hasty and lazy practice prevails, 1 

 have seen a pear orchard with all the ground covered with 

 underwood formi g a sort of coppice. I will therefore say no 

 more about suckers, but proceed now to the proper mode of 

 obtaining stocks, first speaking of those which are to be ob- 

 tained from the pips, and then of those which are to be obtained 

 from the stones. The pips of crabs, apples, pears, and quinces, 

 are obtained from the fruit ; the three former in great abundance, 

 when cider, perry, or verjuice, is made ; the last with some 

 difficulty, on account of the comparative rareness of the fruit, but 

 quince stocks are so easily obtained from cuttings or layers, that 

 this is not a matter of much consequence. The pips are, of 

 course, collected in the fail of the year ; and, when collected, 

 make them dry, put them immediately into fine dry earth or sand, 

 and keep them safe from mice until the month of March. When 

 that month comes, dig a piece of ground well and truly ; make 

 it rich ; make it very fine, form it into beds three feet wide. 



