A pear orchard in exuberant flower is a vegetable spectacle not easily matched, for the bending branches of the pear tree give a gracefulness to its outline far exceeding the stiff formality of the apple tree, and oppressed with a multitudinous crowd of blossoms its branches almost trail the ground, a bending load of beauty that seems by moonlight a mass of silvery ingots. The Barland Orchard, between Worcester and Malvern, containing more than seventy trees, lofty as oaks, cannot be seen by a traveller without admiration, and is the finest in the kingdom, though the trees are now getting old. CHAPTER XLVIII. ON THE PRODUCTION AND CHOICE OF FRUIT TREES. Although new sorts of fruits are easily obtainable from seeds, yet this method of production is much too slow for general purposes, and when kernel trees—that is those raised from seed—are in the slow progress of such events brought to produce fruit, it is ten to one if it be of any value; so that even seedling trees, when they have attained sufficient size, are best used for stocks upon which to graft any desired sort. In reproducing a constant supply of well-known sorts of fruit, three plans are usually practised, namely, _Budding_, _Grafting_, and _Cutting_. _Budding_ is usually employed in the case of smaller fruit or flower trees, and but seldom with apples and pears; this well-known process, however, is frequently had recourse to in the nursery; it is performed for fruit trees in the same way as for roses, and therefore needs no description in this place, as we can scarcely conceive the farmer doing much in this direction, except as a matter of amusement and experiment. _Grafting_ is a common process on most farms with orcharding; a sort of fruit may be wished to be changed or a promising tree may be broken, and in either case the farmer should know enough of the process of grafting to be able to do it himself or else to properly direct others. [Illustration: 1. The Graft. 2. The Stock.]