362 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
growers have " put their house in order " very little reliable data can 
be collected. 
Through neglect of studying the tree as an individual great 
economic loss has resulted. It was realization of this fact that deter- 
mined the line of the present investigations on Fruit Tree Stocks. 
Until the question of the relationship between stocks and scions has 
been investigated, information on other cultural matters is liable to 
be vitiated. The immediate task was to deal with the root system. 
The present report deals with the results so far obtained in one 
section of the work, the investigations of the Paradise Apple Stocks. 
II. Paradise Stocks. The Problem briefly stated. 
The question which presented itself at the outset of these particular 
trials was by no means new, though it bore a new aspect. 
Fruit-growers have regarded the Paradise stock as a dwarfing 
stock for bush and various forms of garden trees. Trees worked on 
the Paradise were expected to be remunerative early, owing to the 
precocity induced by the dwarfing stock. Whilst it was realized 
that various new types of so-called ' Paradise ' had been introduced 
into common use since the days of the ' Paradise ' and " creeper 
apple tree," frequently mentioned by seventeenth and eighteenth 
century authors, no very clear idea was generally held as to what 
these various ■ Paradise ' were, what their vigour and special utility. 
It is true that Duhamel du Monceau * had expressly pointed out that, 
in his comparison of the ' Doucin ' and " Le Pommier nain de Paradis," 
degrees of " dwarfingness " existed. Lindley f had emphasized the 
aspect of soil suitability in his remarks about the Doucin stock, 
which was " most generally, in our nurseries, called the Paradise 
stock, although widely different from the Pomme Paradis of the 
French, a sort not worth growing in this country." Loudon { rein- 
forced these two aspects when he quoted Dubreuil as recommending 
" the Doucin for clayey and light soils," and when he lays down rules 
for the choice of stocks " where an occupier of a garden has only a 
short interest therein," and " where a plantation is made on free- 
hold property, or with a view to posterity." Furthermore, he hinted 
at the question of disease resistance in relation to the root system, 
whilst other writers touched on the question of their influence 
on flavour and the ease with which certain stocks and scions 
formed a " callus." Yet a critical and comparative study had never 
been kept up to date, and the distinctive values of new types of 
* Paradise ' were not commonly determined. Growers became too 
ready to accept * Paradise ' whatever it might be without further 
inquiry. The following pages illustrate the truth of this statement, 
and support, even more than might be expected, the fact that very 
* Du Monceau, Traite des Arbres Fruitiers (1768). 
f G. Lindley, Guide to the Orchard &c. (1831). 
% Loudon, Encyclopedia of Gardening (1835). 
