FEBRUARY. 37 



not pruned has not for the last six years had anything like a crop of 

 fruit, whilst those pruned have never failed to bear an average crop. 



Fact number three is as follows. Here are nine trees of Manks 

 Codlin Apple ; for the five years previous to 1854 they had no fruit 

 except a few very misshapen ones. These trees have been covered with 

 spurs, and nothing could exceed their beauty when in blossom ; but year 

 after year no fruit except, as just observed, a few misshapen ones ; 

 a pressure of other engagements prevented me from giving them any 

 attention until last spring. I was well aware that thinning of the 

 branches, thinning of spurs, and thinning of blossoms and fruit, was 

 sound practice founded on science. Our grandfathers knew this, and 

 some of them followed it, though, unfortunately, it has not been carried 

 out so fully as it ought to have been. Well, then, I cut off a third part 

 of the spurs of some of the trees, and more than that of others, 

 and the result is I had the past season a fair crop from all the trees, and 

 the fruits were particularly fine and well formed. One tree, the smallest 

 of them, which vras operated on very freely, in order to get it to grow, 

 was much admired by many gardeners who called here during the 

 season ; the fruit on it was very fine. To the pruning these trees 

 got last spring I attribute the crop of the past season. " J. M." and 

 " Helminthion " may, if they think proper, ascribe the failure of the 

 crops of the five previous seasons to our "precarious springs." 



For fact number four I must take "J. M." and " Helminthion" from 

 Yorkshire to Somersetshire, and I may here remark that I am tolerably 

 acquainted with the southern counties. The fact will lose none of its 

 force if I withhold the name of the place. Well, the fact is this : — For 

 15 years before I knew the place, they never could get Peach trees to 

 grow there ; every three or four years a lot of young trees was planted, 

 but to no purpose. Every spring brought forth — not the promise of 

 fruit, but the " curl ; " the trees never made any growth. As in 

 similar cases the locality, the climate, the proximity of the Bristol 

 Channel, and twenty other causes, were blamed for it. But the most 

 surprising part of the matter was that old men could remember that for 

 some 15 or 20 years after the gardens were first made Peach trees had 

 done well. Of course, there were people then who thought, as " Hel- 

 minthion " does now, that our springs were more " precarious " than in 

 olden time. But the gardener who was at the place when I first became 

 acquainted with it some seventeen years ago, was a thorough practical 

 man, self-tiught, and always hunted out a cause for everything. Well, 

 such a man did not long leave the matter as it was ; after a time he 

 ascertained that when the garden was made it was very thin of soil, 

 and that to make it better the surface soil of several acres adjoining 

 (which were afterwards planted) was carted into the garden, until the soil 

 in some places was five feet deep ; this was real light on the subject. 

 As a matter of course Peach trees planted in such a soil would for some 

 years do well ; but after a time came the evil : the sods became rotten, the 

 soil lost its mechanical properties, and became one solid sour mass. No 

 wonder Peach trees should refuse to grow in such soil. Well, now for the 

 remedy. The gardener had the soil of the Peach border taken out to the 

 depth of 4^ feet ; he had two feet of rough stones placed at bottom ; on 



