Quince stocks are obtained from cuttings or mound-layers. Layering is considered the better method of the two. Stocks from the oriental hybrids, of the Kieffer and Le Conte type, are often grown from cuttings in the South. These are made in the spring from mature wood of the preceding year's growth, and are treated much as are grape and currant cuttings. Long cuttings, a foot in length if possible, should be used. These stocks are of little value for varieties of the common pear, but are better than French stocks for the oriental hybrids, since these, in the South at least, usually overgrow French stocks. Own-rooted trees of these oriental hybrids are often grown from cuttings. While of doubtful utility, stocks from other genera may be used for the pear. Some of the thorns are occasionally used as dwarfing stocks. The mountain ash is sometimes used to adapt pears to light sandy soils. Occasionally one hears of pears grafted on sorbus. The pear on the apple is short-lived, but old apple-trees top-worked to pears sometimes give abundant crops for a few years. Apple roots may be used as a nurse for pear cions. To be successful, the pear cion should be long, when, if grafted on short apple-roots and set deeply, the pear sends out roots and eventually becomes own-rooted. PEAR ORCHARDS AND THEIR CARE Perhaps no tree-fruit is more exacting in care than the pear. Young trees, in particular, must be well cared for and more or less coddled if any factor in environment is adverse. Almost any young orchard of this fruit becomes moribund if the owner settles down to self-satisfied complacency. As the trees come into full bearing, the several items of culture need not be so intensive. A perfect pear-orchard is about the consummation of good fruit-growing. But a perfect orchard of this fruit is seldom to be found, for, sooner or later, blight is certain to take its toll. Because of blight, the culture of no other fruit is attended with more frequent or keener disappointments. Today a man may walk in his orchard with adoration, as an artist walks in a beautiful landscape. Tomorrow, blight may blast the fairest trees. Pear-growing, thus, becomes a good deal of a gamble, and the boundaries within which a fruit-grower's ambitions must be confined as to acreage must be more closely drawn than with other fruits. In most pear regions, the risks are too great to venture all in the culture of this fruit.