THE FLOEAL WORLD 



■^ AND 



GARDEN GUIDE. 



JUNE, 186 



THE FEUIT CROP OF 1867. 



T has been frequently remarked in the Floeil World 

 that every season is in some way extraordinary, and "we 

 feel assured none of our readers will demur to this 

 assertion, that this season is as extraordinary as any 

 within remembrance. We have had a long and tedious 

 winter, dragging far into the spring. Nearly all early-sown seeds 

 perished in the ground ; those sown in April were forced into rapid 

 growth by the torrid weather of the early part of May, and were 

 afterwards well nigh killed by the arctic weather that followed. 

 The heat and the cold of May, 1867, will be registered amongst the 

 curiosities of British meteorological records. We have had many 

 opportunities of judging the state of the fruit crops, for during the 

 past few weeks we have travelled over the greater part of the south 

 of England, both east and west, and have touched a few points in 

 the midland. Erom all that we have seen and heard, it appears that 

 of Apricots there is a promise of a large crop, and that is pretty 

 generally distributed. Of Peaches and Nectarines, the crop, generally 

 speaking, is small, but there are many exceptions in favoured 

 districts. Pears are, to a great extent, a failure ; certainly there is 

 not anywhere an average show of young fruit. Of Apples and 

 Cherries, there is abundance. The fruit crop is, of course, 

 dependent on a variety of circumstances ; the weather in autumn in 

 great part determines it, for if the young wood and the fruit spurs 

 are not well ripened, there must be a limited production. But 

 however perfect the trees may be as to condition, the formation of 

 fruit is next to impossible if the weather is cold and wet when the 

 trees are in bloom. As a rule, the several kinds of fruit-trees are 

 tolerably regular in their several seasons of flowering, and follow 

 each other in an established order of sequence. In the present year, 

 however, there has been a little deviation from the established 

 order of things, and instead of pears, plums, and cherries being, as 

 they usually are, far in advance of apples, they were kept back by 

 cold until the apples, feeling the cold less, had so far advanced as to 

 be ready to open with them. Consequently we have in many 

 VOL II. — NO. TI. 11 



