If one of your late correspondents had good reason for thinking enough had been written on the subject of planting pears, it would become me to shrink from a compliance with the requests that are made to embody my observations on the subject, their treatment, the best varieties, and the adaptation of the quince or pear stocks to our varying climate. I claim nothing more for my observations than the experience of a ten years' residence on a fruit farm, with a pear orchard of a thousand trees, embracing one hundred varieties - objects of special interest to me.

In the science of pear culture in this country, the rubbish is just cleared away, and the foundations firmly laid, while the noble edifice to be erected on its walls is to be the work of the laborers now in the field of observation, and those who can bring contributions of experience, with one item of truth after another, till, in time, an edifice will be erected of such towering height and importance, as no other country than ours with its brilliant skies and clear atmosphere, can witness.

My observations will tend to contrast the comparative success of experiments with dwarf trees on the quince and those on their native stocks, and may be regarded by some as disparaging to the former. The glowing picture of Mr. Rivers' orchard of dwarf trees, drawn by the lamented Downing, was not without its influence in leading me to regard that as the mode of culture, which, while it marked the progress of the age in horticulture, was destined to supersede in a great measure, the growing of pears on their own stocks.

Viewing the subject through such a medium, it is no marvel! I embarked extensively in the growing of pears on the quince. With some varieties I have been eminently successful. The crop during the past season has not only been gratifying to my pride as an orchardist, but has proved eminently remunerative; indeed, the facts will warrant the remark, no crop grown upon the farm has paid so well, in view of the labor bestowed, as a crop of Duchesse D'AngouIeme, on the quince. Both the largest of this variety, and of the Bartlett, have been upon the quince. At one time there was counted upon the mantle, in the fruit-room, twenty-five that weighed a pound and upwards, each - specimens, it is true, that had been selected from their fellows on account of their size.

The sight of a hundred trees, closely planted in rows, about twenty in a row - each tree resembling its fellow in size and form, and each sustaining as much of a crop as it could prudently be trusted with; the eye here and there lighting upon a specimen with its blushing cheek turned towards the sun, and the whole, when gathered, yielding over twenty bushels - was an argument in favor of dwarf trees, the force of which the most incredulous could not well withstand. But, turning from it to the Onondaga, and contrasting the thrifty, vigorous growth of that excellent variety on its own stock, its boughs loaded with all the fruit it could comfortably bear, with not a few sickly starveling specimens on the quince, with only here and there a solitary pear, and a very different opinion might be formed of the success of the pear on the quince.

My trees on both pear and quince were planted at the same time, received equal care in planting, stand upon the same plat of ground, and occupy alternate rows. The space between the trees has enjoyed as equal culture as possible. As regards their annual pruning, though not as rigidly performed, especially in the earlier years as I now could wish, and, with my present views I would now give them, still the eye of the amateur will not detect any great departure from the most approved method, or if he recognizes early errors, will perceive they have been measurably remedied in later years. I am satisfied that no one, during the earlier years of his experience, ever prunes with a sufficiently rigid hand; this is a faculty acquired only by long years of experience. Well do I remember turning my back upon an experienced cultivator while he was giving me my first practical lessons; the conviction was overwhelming that there was a needless, profligate waste of those fondly watched towering shoots. Notwithstanding all the instructions that have been given, and the necessity of their being observed if we would have good fruit, I venture the remark that it is the last advice that is heeded by the inexperienced, who forget that the wood and fruit force are antagonistic principles.

Experience has taught me that my best crops have been obtained where the system of pruning was so close as to leave but three or four buds of the previous summer's growth. The past season, an entire row of dwarf trees showed a second crop of blossoms, when the fruit set was about the size of a walnut. Such a phenomenon evidently obtains when nature feels herself thwarted in having suffered the loss of a large proportion of the fruit-buds from the knife of the pruner; the crop that she has started and is carrying forward to maturity being inadequate to enable nature to expend upon it her accumulated fruit force. The same thing may be observed where an accident has befallen the tree in the loss of some of its main branches, or a violent storm has robbed it of a greater part of its crop of fruit.

As this occurs in my grounds to the prolific varieties only, and those on the quince, it suggests the thought whether the knife is not too vigorously used, and whether it might not be a better practice to thin the crop when half advanced, when we can pluck the illy-formed and stung fruit at a time so late as to forbid nature expending her energies at the expense of the already well-formed and half-grown fruit.

Your western readers will understand our difficulties when I contrast their fertile soil with my own. The plat of ground selected for my pear orchard is at the base of a mound known to be occupied in 1666, so that it is literally true that for nearly two hundred years the land has been yielding up its inorganic elements; and thus it is with most of the soil devoted to the pear on the whole Atlantic slope. But though the labor demanded in this branch of industry is greater, the question, is a pertinent one, Whether that labor does not have its reward in richer and more highly flavored fruit than the West can grow. Some facts that have come to my knowledge, though few, seem to me to look in that direction.

My farm was literally and emphatically a worn-out one, but having a rolling surface, with a soil of gravelly loam, the decomposed sandstone of New Jersey, and a like subsoil with such a proportion of shale as to give it the requisite porosity for producing rich fruit, I commenced deepening the soil by the use of the subsoil plough, and manuring with common barnyard manure. This accomplished, and one crop taken from the field, the holes were dug of sufficient depth and width, that, when properly filled, the tree would stand about as deep in the soil as it stood in the nursery row. No one thing have I been more anxious to secure than sufficient depth of hole, fitting it a foot or more with sods, and spreading over these pulverized surface soil to give an even surface; spreading the roots on this, adjusting even the little rootlets, so that they will readily come in contact with the nutriment given them, always taking the precaution to have those rootlets covered lightly with fine pulverized loam, rather than the stimulating compost appropriate for the filling up.

And on the composition of this for our greedy soils depends very much of our future success. No composition has given me such satisfaction in its lasting influence on vegetation as one of muck pulverized by the frosts of winter, mixed in the spring with lime or ashes, bone-dust, and charcoal charged with urine or fresh poudrette. When all of these, or such of them as one can command, thoroughly mixed through the summer and fall with barnyard or stable-manure, are thoroughly commingled with equal quantities of good loam, you have a manure rich enough in inorganic elements, if not to merit a premium, to give you fruit that will universally be acknowledged to be deserving of it.

Properly filling the hole with this and the surface soil, the work is done, except keeping the ground free from weeds in the summer, and the soil between the trees occasionally stirred and loosened, as demanded in the cultivation of a potato crop. My favorite practice is to mulch with straw or refuse hay, believing that it serves to manure the soil independent of its decomposition, possibly by absorbing and retaining ammonia and other gases that play such an important part in the vegetative process.

The depth of hole which was diminished by the foot of sods to underlie the tree, will be a life insurer to the tree, during the severest drought. The mulch, however, will be a guarantee, if such be needed, that death from this cause will not overtake it.

(To Be Continued).

[Dr. Ward is welcome to our pages. He has a right to be heard, having undertaken for pears (and other fruits) what Dr. Underhill has successfully carried out in grapes, the supply of a great want to the New Yorkers. He will open the subject of the difference between the value of the dwarf and the standard pear-tree, which it is well to discuss, now that so many years have elapsed since the experiment was commenced. We shall be glad to receive the doctor's continuation.

With regard to manure for orchards of all kinds, it will probably be found that "street dirt" contains the elements necessary to success; where it can be procured without a long pull, it will be cheap. - Ed].

Cultivation Of The Pear-Tree #1

I hope Doctor Ward is going to do something clever; and more, that he means to let the world know it through the Horticulturist, as he progresses. It is now more than a dozen years since pear culture on the quince has been vigorously started in our country. Many a nurseryman has got rich out of them; and, by calling conventions and forming societies, they intend not to keep their lights under a bushel. Now, out of the millions of dwarf pears the nurserymen have sold, I would like to hear of the very first dwarf pear orchard that has paid expenses. Many tell of pears selling for sixpence, a shilling, even two shillings a piece, in the fruit-shope, and of a certain tree, or trees, in such a one's garden, which annually yield their owners scores of dollars in their fruits. All this may be so. Bat, about the orchards of such trees! where are they? The pear has a thousand, or less, enemies. The blight runs with a zigzag, forked, and sinuous course, through the orchard one year. The slag, and the curled and spotted leaf, like the leprosy, hit them in another. The pestilent field mouse girdles them at the roots in the third; and calamity, in general, is after them in the fourth.

I have had a little experience in this line myself, and the upshot of success in extended pear culture, either dwarf or standard, I receive with great allowance. I hope Doctor Ward will be successful, for, if any man knows how to do the thing, he does. It is well that he is so close to Professor Mapes' superphosphates, and the poudrette factories; and if he gives his trees the very best of garden culture, manuring them like cabbages, trimming and cutting back to order, thinning out his fruits with scissors, and all that 6ort of thing, and don't lose them by disease or casualty, and then can get ten dollars a barrel for his pears, or sixpence a piece for them in market, he'll do* His article is interesting, and I hope he will continue the subject.