1879.] OUR SUPPLY OF APPLES AND PEARS. 3 



planting Apples and Pears by the sides of walks, in what are termed 

 cross-borders, in kitchen-gardens, and even dotting them about in 

 vegetable quarters — the spaces of ground between trees in these 

 positions being frequently occupied with biennial and other flowering 

 plants, and sometimes with Strawberries and vegetable crops. These 

 borders, if devoted to flowers, are rarely properly manured, and are 

 deeply worked with a spade annually among the plants, and close up 

 to, if not over, the roots of the trees. If devoted to vegetables, they 

 are, on the other hand, heavily manured with ordinary dung, deeply 

 dug into the soil. To escape mutilation, the roots of the trees, with 

 a sort of self-preserving instinct, proceed to find peace and comfort 

 in too often an unsuitable and canker-breeding subsoil. In the one 

 case the roots are starved, and in the other too grossly fed; and the 

 respective results are stunted growth and poverty-stricken produce in 

 the one case, and in the other too gross a growth of unfruitful wood, 

 to be annually and ruthlessly cut away with the pruning-knife. Of 

 these two evils it would be difficult to say which is the worst or most 

 unreasonable. 



Trees in such positions as the one named must of necessity be kept 

 in very restricted limits as to size, or injury to the things among which 

 they are planted would be greater than it really is ; and even with all 

 the restriction practised, the one crop is most injurious to the other. 

 To make matters bearable, the pinching and pruning are carried to 

 an injurious excess every year, leaving as many knife-wounds as 

 make it a wonder that decrepitude, canker, and decay are not more 

 fatal than they are. The pruning of such trees, after the fashion of 

 the present day, is an evil ; and it is to be feared that in not a few 

 cases it is resorted to to permit of the other evil of making room for 

 growing every conceivable variety in a given space. Root-pruning 

 every two or three years is perhaps the more reasonable course to 

 pursue ; but if trees are to be grown with a vigour capable of bearing 

 a full crop of decent fruit, it is a process that can only be carried to a 

 certain extent, and that not sufficient to do away, under the circum- 

 stances, with the murderous pruning which leaves trees more con- 

 spicuous for their number of knife-wounds than for anything else. 



This miniature-tree system, mixed up with other crops, is, generally 

 speaking, not satisfactory. It is a sore evil to other kitchen-garden 

 crops, and leads to so much cutting and restriction, that it never will 

 admit of a satisfactory supply of fruit, even if the selection of sorts be 

 ever so suited to the locality. In so important a horticultural matter 

 as this, it is strange that we adhere so tenaciously to the mixing of 

 fruits with other crops : and the evil is most flagrant in what are 

 termed the best of gardens ; and hence the faithfulness with which it 



