1884.] 
FEUIT-TREE STOCKS. 
189 
FEUIT-TREE STOCKS. 
S pomologists we are here to devise 
w'ays to produce better fruit, and 
more of it. Enemies may assail and 
friends falter, but fruit is a foregone 
conclusion. Its exquisite flavours were put 
in as persuasives to its use. Nutritious, 
healthful, economical, it was meant to bo 
eaten. As a peep into possibilities we find 
that one apple-tree, growing on less than two 
rods of ground, has produced in a single year 
a hundred bushels of fruit—in some recorded 
instances more. Two pear-trees on the same 
amount of land have done as well. It is safe 
to say that never in the history of the world 
has one-fourth as much sustenance for man or 
beast been derived from roots or cereals oc¬ 
cupying equal space. A grape-vine is a won¬ 
derful economist of space; occupying a crevice 
in a rock, or a contracted corner where nothing 
larger than a thistle could grow, it climbs a 
tree, the side of a building, or runs along a 
fence and furnishes a delicious dessert for 
fifty people. Considerations like these are 
worthy of notice, when Mill and other econo¬ 
mists assure us that population is, and will be, 
limited by the means of support. Starvation 
sets hounds to human life. 
It is well known that our best flavoured 
varieties are not as hardy and do not hear as 
w'ell as the coarse rough iron-clads. The iron¬ 
clads have their uses—for vinegar, jelly, and 
for fueling they are admirable ; but iron-clads 
w^on’t fill the bills. The public taste is con¬ 
stantly growing more refined and critical. In¬ 
ferior qualities find none so poor as to do them 
reverence. Steam and machinery are changing 
the make-up of the labouring masses; by 
relieving them from heavy debasing drudgery, 
and employing their higher faculties in skilful 
manipulations and the guidance of forces ; 
perceptions and sensibilities become acute, 
their grain becomes finer ; fine-grained people 
demand fine-grained apples. 
Doomed and foreordained to have good 
fruit, how shall we get it? We shall 
not go to the cider-mill for seeds to propagate 
nursery stocks, knowing as we do the sources 
from which the incongruous mixture comes. 
Here is the produce of trees enfeebled by 
forty years of abuse and starvation, inflicted 
by unrighteous ploughmen and grain-growers. 
More dead than alive, as a last expiring effort, 
they gave their perverse owners a few imma¬ 
ture apples by way of “ turning the other 
cheek also.” Here, too, are seeds from trees 
constitutionally feeble, that never coiild be 
forced into vigorous and healthy growth by 
anything short of Warner’s safe kidney cure. 
Here is the product of small crabbed, scurvy 
trees, which bear fruit flavoured with vinegar 
and gall, its pulp bearing a close resemblance 
to pulverised sole leather ; if like begets like, 
if the stock influences the graft, we shall get 
away from such a collection without standing 
much on the order of our going. A leading 
nurseryman tells us that “ seedlings of free 
stocks are ordinarily produced from seeds 
taken promiscuously from the cider-mill in 
autumn.” The same authority, speaking of 
Pear seedlings, says, “ Great care should be 
taken to gather the fruits of the hardy, 
healthy, vigorous trees only, and the seeds 
should he full and plump.” You will find 
this in The Fruit Garden, by P. Barry, to 
whom we and the rest of mankind owe much. 
We should discard all seed from grafted stocks. 
“ Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,” says a 
report in the Maine State Pomological Trans¬ 
actions for 1882, “the natural fruit stock is 
the best.” 
That the young tree takes its character 
from the seed, and to a large extent gives 
character to the graft inserted in it, has never 
been disputed, and never much heeded. 
Nurserymen admit; the fact, and pay no 
attention to it. Our neighbour, Mr. Gorton, 
top-grafted a row of English Russets with 
Roxbury Russets, and they have uniformly 
borne more and finer Apples than other rows 
of root-grafted russets by their side. George 
W. Campbell in Transactions Michigan Pomo¬ 
logical Societg for 1877, says ho grafted “ a 
light blush rose, finely formed, but of a light 
undecided colour, on a very dark crimson rose 
not well formed. The buds grew, and re¬ 
tained their habits of growth and foliage and 
form of flowers, 'but they took the dark 
crimson colour of the stock on which they 
were budded.” There is every reason to be¬ 
lieve that if we should grow our seedlings 
from the seeds of carefully selected good 
flavoured fruit grown on vigorous, healthy, 
good-bearing trees, and persevere in that 
