"When great difficulty occurs in making a tree, whether fructiferous or ornamental, of any species or variety, produce blossoms, or in making its blossoms set when produced, success probably will be obtained by budding or grafting upon a stock nearly enough allied to the graft to preserve it alive for a few years, but not permanently. The pear tree affords a stock of this kind to the apple, and I have had a heavy crop from a graft inserted in a tall pear stock, only twenty months previously, when every blossom of the same variety of fruit in the orchard was destroyed by frost. The fruit thus obtained was perfect externally, and possessed all its ordinary qualities; but the cores were black, without seed; and every blossom would have fallen abortively, if growing upon its native stock. The graft perished the winter following.

"My own experience induces me to think very highly of the excellence of the apricot stock for the peach or nectarine; but whenever that or the plum stock is employed, I am confident the bud cannot be inserted too near the ground, if vigorous and durable trees are required.

"The form and habit which a peach tree, of any given variety, is disposed to assume, is very much influenced by the kind of stock on which it is budded. If upon a plum or apricot stock, its stem will increase in size considerably as its base approaches the stock, and it will be much disposed to emit many lateral shoots, as always occurs in trees whose stems taper considerably upwards; consequently, such a tree will be more disposed to spread itself horizontally, than to ascend to the top of the wall, even when a single stem is suffered to stand perpendicularly. On the contrary, where a peach is budded upon a stock of some cultivated variety of its own species, the stock and the budded stem remain very nearly of the same size at the point of junction, as well as above and below. No obstacle is presented to the ascent or descent of the sap, which appears to rise more abundantly to the summit of the tree. It appears, also, to flow more freely into the slender branches, which have been the bearing wood of preceding years; and these extend, consequently, very widely compared with the bulk of the stock and large branches.

"When a stock of the same species with the graft or bud, but of a variety far less changed by cultivation, is employed, its effects are very nearly allied to those produced by a stock of another species or genus. Some think the stock influences the hardiness of the scion; but I have ample reason to believe that this opinion is wholly erroneous, and this kind of hardiness in the root alone never can be a quality of any value in a stock, for the branches of every species of tree are much more easily destroyed by frost than its roots.

"Many believe also that a peach tree, when grafted upon its native stock, very soon perishes; but my experience does not further support this conclusion than that it proves seedling peach trees, when growing in a very rich soil, to be greatly injured, and often killed, by the excessive use of the pruning-knife upon their branches, when these are confined to too narrow limits. I think the stock, in this instance, can only act injuriously by supplying more nutriment than can be expended ; for the root which nature gives to each seedling plant must be well, if not best, calculated for its support; and the chief general conclusions which experience has enabled me to draw safely are, that a stock of species or genus different from that of the fruit to be grafted upon it, can be used rarely with advantage, unless where the object of the planter is to restrain and debilitate; and where stocks of the same species with the bud or graft are used, it will be found advantageous, generally, to select such as approximate in their habits and state of change, or improvement from cultivation, those of the variety of fruit which they are intended to support".

The only situation in which I can believe that the stock of another species can be advantageously employed, is where the soil happens to be unfriendly to the species from which the bud or scion is taken. This is justified by my observing that, in a garden so low lying as to be very subject to an overflow of water, the only pear trees which were at all productive were those grafted upon quince stocks, and the quince is well known to endure water much better than either the apple or pear.-Princ. of Gard.

Stocks for general use may be used for grafting or budding, when from the size of a good goosequill to half an inch, or not more than an inch in the part where the graft or bud is to be inserted. Stocks of two or three inches, or more, diameter, either the stems or branches, are also occasionally grafted or budded with success, but are not proper for general practice.

Crab Stocks are all such as are raised from seeds, etc, of any wild ungraded trees, particularly if the fruit-tree kind, such as the wild crab-apple of the woods and hedges, wild pears, plums, wild cherry, and of such other trees as have not been grafted or budded.

Free Stocks are such as are raised from the seed, layers, etc, of any of the cultivated varieties of fruit-trees, and others.

Paradise or Doucin stocks are raised from layers or suckers, from a dwarf variety of apple, the roots of which are produced nearer to the surface than those from crab stocks.

The French Paradise stock is distinguished from all others by its very dwarf growth, clear chestnut-coloured shoots, and small fibrous roots, which spread near the surface.

The English Paradise may be cither referred to as the Doucin of the French or the Dutch Paradise; for in English nurseries, trees propagated on either are said to be on paradise stocks. Of these two, the Doucin has the darkest shoots. Their effects on the growth of the trees worked upon them are similar, being intermediate between the very dwarf habit induced by the French Paradise, and the luxuriant growth induced by the crab or free stocks. - Card. Chron. See Scion, Grafting, and Budding.