In determining the choice of stocks, the nature of the soil in which the grafted trees are to grow should have full weight.
The pear may be readily raised by sowing the pips of ordinary cultivated or of wilding kinds, these forming what are known as free or pear stocks, on which the choicer varieties are grafted for increase.
Some of the finer pears do not unite readily with the quince, and in this case double working is resorted to; that is to say, a vigorous-growing pear is first grafted on the quince, and then the choicer pear is grafted on the pear introduced as its foster parent.
Of the vertical stem and branch, and trained in afresh, or they may be grafted with other sorts, if a variety of kinds is wanted.
This vicious system, grafted as it was upon an inefficient administration, and added to the weight of a continually depreciated currenc y, debased both by ill-advised fiscal measures and by public cupidity, formed one of the principal causes of the financial embarrassments which assailed the treasury with ever increasing force in the latter part of the 16th and during the 17th and 18th centuries.
