FOREIGN NOTICES. 



43 



April and the 1st of May, (I speak of tlie south- 

 western counties,) the beds are raked oil" so as to 

 leave not more than two inches of light mould above 

 the crowns of the roots, and none is cut until live or 

 six inches above the "ground , and I never remember 

 a person to whom this practice was new, partakintr 

 of tlie produce, who did not remark on its exceed- 

 infjly nne flavor and delicious quiilit)'. By this 

 means a great quantity of edible matter is gained, 

 and that certainly without the sacririce of any deli- 

 cacy or fineness of flavor. Moreover, to an un- 

 prejudiced eye, a dish of green Asparagus is at 

 least eipial in appearance to one of white. I make 

 no doubt that if one of the Covent Garden dealers 

 was to start with a lot of green •' Grass," all who 

 ventured to taste it would contiiuie to frequent his 

 stall in preference to any other. In conclusion let 

 me ask, whether any real advantage accrues from 

 the use of the saw called an Asparagus-knife, over 

 one of ordinary make, with a blade of .sufficient 

 length 1 — 0. Gard. Chron. 



Root-Pruned Pear Trees. — As I was one of 

 the first who called your attention to the root prun- 

 ing of Pear trees, for the purpose of making them 

 bear early, I was glad to And, on a visit to Saw- 

 bridgeworth nursery the other daj', that Mr. Rivers 

 has carried out, with the most complete success, 

 his management of the Pear, so as to produce early 

 fruitfulncss. and yet the most vigorous and healthy 

 growth. I should say that you will scarcely find 

 one tree in a hundred of his vast nursery of Pears 

 (coveting, I can not recollect liow many acres,) 

 which is not covered with bloom. The trees are 3 

 to 4 feet high, trained conicall}', and, with few ex- 

 ceptions, all grafted on Quince stocks. In addition 

 to the dwarfing ellect of this stock, he finds many 

 of the best kinds of Pears, which are worthles.s on 

 Pear stocks, produce excellently flavored fruit on 

 the Quince. There are, however, some kinds which 

 he finds it impossible to cultivate on this stock, and 

 therefore, in order to avail hiiuself of the advanta- 

 ges of the stock, he first grafts on it a common Pear, 

 and then grafts or buds the reluctant or refractory 

 variety on the Pear ; and by this mode of double 

 working, he procures a good Iwaring tree, with all 

 the advantage of the Quince root. Five years ago I 

 had small Pear trees, with bloom buds in November, 

 which bore a good crop in the following year ; and 

 any one who had laid in a stock of these little coni- 

 cal trees last autumn, might have this season had 

 an orchard of Pears ia full bearing, always pre- 

 suming that we do not have such a May to destroy 

 our fruit as we had last season. It is astonishing 

 what a collection of these trees may be contained 

 in a small space ; from 5 to 6 feet apart, in rows 

 running north and south, is quite space sufficient. 

 I feel satisfied that not half suflicient attention is 

 paid to tills fruit for our desserts ; a ver\' little care, 

 and a judicious selection of sorts, would ensure them 

 daily from the end of July till Miiy. I found two 

 sorts in Mr. Rivers' fruit-house both in excellent 

 order — the Fortune, an admirable Pear, and the Ne 

 plus Meuris, and I dare say these will be equally 

 good a month hence. I think ho '.old mc he had 

 nearly 9U0 kinds, of course very many of which are 



worthless, but there are many which ho has not yet 

 proved, and again, although his grounds afford a 

 great variety of soil and aspect, yet as it is known 

 tliat climate, aspect, and soil, have a strong influ- 

 ence on the excellence of the fruit, we are still in 

 want of information from your various correspon- 

 dents on this subject. There are many kinds which 

 produce finer looking fruit on walls, which, how- 

 ever, are much surpassed in flavor by the smaller 

 fruits, as on espaliers or on conical-shaped standards. 

 I have adopted a suggestion of Mr. Rivers' in plant- 

 ing a conical trained standard near the wall between 

 my Peach trees, and find the fruit of the tender va- 

 rieties better flavored than what is grown against 

 the wall ; and these trees take up litilc or no wall. 

 Mr. Rivers finds the trees grafted on Quince stocks 

 flourish better when the whole of the stock is cover- 

 ed with earth (he grafting at about <i inches from 

 the ground) as the stock is apt to get hard and 

 hide-bound, especiall}' when the graft is oi a kind 

 of vigorous growth. He has planted several on 

 mounds of earth, tonguiiig the stock to encourage 

 the throwing out of small roots, and he proposes ia 

 the autumn to replant them, cutting away the bot- 

 tom strong roots, and then obtaining little else than 

 a mass of fine fibrous roots for the support of his 

 tree, which will make fruitfulncss certain. When 

 this matter was first discussed, that is, a systematic 

 course of root-pruning, for we all admitted that it 

 was occasionally done before, the objectors cried out 

 that no good fruit would be produced, that the fruit 

 like the trees would be stunted and without flavor 

 and gritty. I can report that the fruit on my root- 

 pruned trees has been finer than that produced on 

 old trees which were left in their natural slate ; but 

 these pruned trees must be duly attended to, ma- 

 nured, and must be mulched in a dry summer. — 

 Dodman. P. S. I forgot to mention that at Saw- 

 bridgeworth, Mr. Rivers is making a large collec- 

 tion of Plums, having nearly 150 kinds, many ob- 

 tained from Germany as well as America. I think 

 it important to obtain some of the hardy German 

 kinds, which are so much used in cooking", both of 

 the earliest and the latest sorts. Gard. Chroii. 



BliLLiNG Insects on the Vine. — In a review of 

 a new Traite sur les Vins de la France, by Batii.- 

 LiAT, in the Gardener's Chronicle, we find the fol- 

 lowing highly interesting account of a successful 

 mode of destroying insects, infesting the Grape 

 Vine : 



In the first part of his treatise, the author has 

 given some account of the insects which are most 

 injurious to the Vine in France, viz., Pyralis, or 

 Ver de la Vigne ; a species of Tinea, or leigne de 

 la Vigne ; and the altise or pucevette, a coleopte- 

 rous insect of the genus Chrysomela. Of these, 

 the first mentioned is the most formidable, extend- 

 ing its ravages over great tracts of country-, and 

 occasioning enormous losses in the vineyards, espe- 

 cially in the southern provinces. In the depart- 

 ments of the Saone and Loire, and of the Rhine, for 

 example, the loss occasioned by it in lU years has 

 been computed at 34,030,000 francs, and this, says 

 Mr. B., is by no means an exaggerated estimate. 

 In the department of the Lower Charcnte, between 



