general demand for them in America, so that they are carried by only a few nurseries and are not looked upon as staple goods even with those dealers; and on this account the price is necessarily increased. Thus each tree costs more than a similar tree of the same age and variety propagated in the usual way. But the greatest increase of expense comes from the fact that many more trees are required to plant the same area. There is often an advantage, as already argued, in planting more trees to the acre, but it costs something to gain this advantage. An acre of ground can be planted with thirty-five standard apple trees set thirty-five feet apart each way, and these trees will cost, roughly estimating retail prices at $12 a hundred, $4.20. To plant an acre to dwarf apple trees, setting them six feet apart each way, which is about as thick as these trees should ever be planted, will require 1,210 trees. Estimating the retail price roughly at $15 a hundred this would make the first cost $181.50—a considerably greater initial investment in the orchard.

2. The trees are shorter lived.—This statement is true for certain kinds of dwarf trees, but not for others. Certain varieties of pears, for example, which do not unite well with the quince root, naturally make short lived trees. On the other hand other varieties of pears appear to live as long and thrive fully as well on quince roots as on pear roots. There is a common belief, especially in England, that apples worked on French paradise roots are apt to be short-lived. The nurserymen who hold this belief contend, however, that the so-called English Paradise, more properly called Doucin, supplies a stock on which apples will live to as great an age as on any other stock whatever. There is some evidence to show that vigorous varieties of plums worked on Americana roots or on dwarf sand cherry are shorter lived than the same varieties on freer growing stocks. In many cases, however, dwarf trees live as long as standards; and in almost all cases they live long enough.

3. They require more care.—This objection stands particularly against the dwarf trees trained in special and intricate forms. Such trees undoubtedly do require more careful attention, more frequent going-over, and more hand work in the course of the year. It is probably not true that apples, pears, plums or peaches in bush or pyramid forms require any more labor or attention than standard trees to secure equally good results. On the other hand it must not be forgotten, as has already been pointed out, that whatever care may be required is much more easily given the dwarf trees than the standards.

4. They are not a commercial success.—This statement, too, though undoubtedly having some truth in it, can not stand without qualification. It is certainly true that no one could grow ordinary varieties of apples, like Baldwin or Ben Davis for instance, on dwarf trees in competition with men who are growing the same varieties on standards. It is probably true that fancy varieties of apples can be grown with profit on dwarf trees, but even this can not be strongly urged. So far as apples are concerned the chief value of dwarf trees for modern commercial enterprises in America will come through their use as fillers between rows of standard trees. In the case of pears the situation is somewhat more favorable to dwarf trees. There are a number of orchards in this country where pears have been successfully grown for market, these many years, on dwarf trees. The famous and everywhere planted Bartlett succeeds admirably on the quince stock wherever the soil is suited to it. No successful commercial orchards of dwarf peaches or plums can be cited in this country, individual trees of these kinds even being extremely rare; yet there is good reason to suppose that under favorable conditions dwarf peaches and plums may have some commercial value. Such value may be more in the way of supplementing standard trees than in superseding them, but it is still worth consideration. So that, after all, when we say that dwarf fruit trees are not a commercial success we mean merely that they will not take the place of standard trees. The large market orchards must always continue to be made up of standard trees; but in their own way the dwarf trees will find a limited place even in commercial operations, and this use of them seems destined to be more general in the future than it has been in the past.

III

PROPAGATION

The propagation of dwarf fruit trees is in some senses a more critical and interesting problem than the propagation of ordinary nursery stock. The successful production of a dwarf fruit tree depends primarily on its propagation. The selection of stocks for dwarfing purposes is necessarily a complicated matter. Under the terms of the problem it is impossible that the stock and the cion which are wedded together should be very closely related. The stock must be distinctly different and pronouncedly dwarfer in his habit of growth.

It is not always an easy matter to find a stock which is thus distinctly different from the tree which it is desired to grow and which will at the same time form with it a vigorous and long lived union. It is necessary further that the propagation can be carried on with ease and with a fair degree of success in commercial nurseries. If difficult methods of grafting are required, or if only a small stand of nursery trees can be secured, the undertaking becomes too expensive from the nurseryman's point of view.

The methods of propagating dwarf trees are for the most part the same as those used in reproducing the same kinds of fruit on standard stocks. As a matter of fact nearly all dwarf trees are propagated by budding. Apples, pears, and plums can be readily grafted, but budding is simpler, speedier, and usually the cheaper process in the nursery. In the upper Mississippi Valley, where plums are somewhat extensively worked on Americana plum roots, grafting is rather common. The side graft and the whip graft are the forms most used.

The theory of the production of a dwarf fruit tree by the restraining of its growth has already been mentioned in another chapter. The dwarf stock simply supplies less food than is required for the normal growth of the variety under propagation, and the tree is, in a sense, starved or stunted into its dwarf stature.

As the selection of proper stocks—the adaptation of stock to cion—is one of the fundamental problems in dwarf fruit growing, we may now address ourselves to that. We will take up the different classes of fruit in order.

THE APPLE

Everyone who has observed the wild or native apples which grow in New England pastures must frequently have noticed certain dwarf and slow-growing specimens. It it not difficult to find such which do not reach a height of five feet in ten years of unobstructed growth. If the cions of ordinary varieties of apples like Greening and Winesap should be grafted upon these stocks, the result would be a dwarf Greening or Winesap. If these dwarf wild apples could be produced with certainty and at a low price, they would furnish a source of supply for dwarf apple stocks.

The Paradise apple so-called (Fig. 7) is simply one of these dwarf varieties which can be reproduced freely and cheaply. This reproduction is secured nearly always by means of mound layerage. As the variety does not come true to seed, any more than such varieties as King or Hubbardston do, some such method of propagation is necessary. This Paradise apple is naturally inclined to stool out somewhat from the roots. This habit is