PARADISE APPLE STOCKS. 
361 
PARADISE APPLE STOCKS. 
Being the First Report of the Work in Progress at the 
Wye College Fruit Experiment Station, East Malling. 
By R. G. Hatton, M.A. 
I. Introduction. 
The custom of grafting fruit trees upon various root systems other 
than their own is of ancient origin. The question of which is the 
most proper stock to use for individual varieties under different 
conditions has been matter for much speculation even from those 
early times. The very prominence which Virgil gives to it in his 
legendary account of grafting is proof of the importance attached 
to the choice of a stock, and ever since, amongst horticulturists, the 
matter has been one for discussion, often of minute detail. The 
inequalities of growth, cropping power, and vitality in fruit trees 
of the same variety, were evidently as patent to writers of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries as they are to us to-day. The state 
of affairs is so concisely summed up by a " Lover of Planting" * 
that a passage is worth quoting : 
" It's manifest that amongst Trees of one kind, in the same orchard, 
you shall have some one of them bear better fruit than any of the 
rest sometimes ; and it's not known what to impute this excellency 
more probably to than that the stocks they were grafted on might be 
. . . some better, some worse. So that to conclude it cannot be 
amiss to be so far curious about the stocks you graft. . . ." Barely 
a century later Thomas Hitt f was enjoining growers of fruit that 
" if they buy their trees of nurserymen, they should diligently inquire 
upon what stocks they were propagated. For stocks are in some 
measure a sort of soil to the kinds of trees raised on them." 
And yet it is very doubtful to-day whether fruit-growers have 
progressed much further in their knowledge of the best choice and selec- 
tion of stocks upon which to work trees. Most fruit-growers are con- 
vinced that, as regards the tree itself, its period of maturity, its actual 
vigour, and even its constitution are largely affected by the stock on 
which it is worked. As regards the fruit, it appears equally probable 
that its quality, embracing degrees of colour, size, and flavour, may be 
likewise influenced. Yet there exists very little, if any, reliable data 
upon these facts, which open up a whole vista of possibilities for 
progress of economic importance. It must be added that until fruit - 
* " A Lover of Planting," The Compleat Planter and Cyderist (1685). 
| Thomas Hitt, A Treatise of Fruit Trees (1757). 
