108 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEB. 



[ Angust 5, 1876. 



and variety of interest liave never been surpassed in this or 

 any other country. 



Was not the riehly-embelliehed marquee at South Kensington 

 deficient in one feature — hanging baskets ? For these it is 

 admirably adapted. Surely they are worthy of encouragement, 

 and certainly they would have greatly contributed to the effect 

 of the Exhibition. — W. 



ABOUT PEAES. 



I AM pleased to see that the idea of obtaining local informa- 

 tion about Pears appears necessary and practicable to Mr. 

 Lnckhurst and others who have written and talked to me on 

 the subject. If anything is to be done this season it must be 

 done quickly. I Would therefore ask all who have any sug- 

 gestions to make to be kind enough to make them at once, or 

 their help and perhaps the season may be lost ; and for once, 

 with the editors' permission, as I am anxious that all who can 

 contribute should do so, I invite anyone who has sup'gestions 

 to make on this particular subject, and objects to have his 

 letter published, to communicate with me privately. Of course 

 I cannot undertake to answer all such letters separately and 

 privately, but I would gladly make use of any practical sug- 

 gestions they might contain to further the object I have at 

 heart. I would, of course, much rather all communications 

 were sent to the editors for publication, as that would tend to 

 awaken an interest in the sutject ; but I know from experience 

 that there are people abounding with stores of knowledge, and 

 yet from timidity or inability to value that knowledge cannot 

 be persuaded to publish it for the good of others. Those who 

 have nothing to say are generally fast enough in saying that 

 nothing, but now and then by accident we come across a veri- 

 table living cyclopa:dia, and wonder how it is that he should 

 hav tso long remained a closed book. 



I have here a letter from a gentleman in Yorkshire on the 

 above subject, who is evidently a great enthusiast and could 

 communicate valuable information to your readers, and as the 

 letter is so much to the point I take the liberty to extract the 

 following. He says, " I shall have great pleasure in giving 

 my experience about Pears. I have cultivated here about sixty 

 varieties for many years, and more than a hundred varieties 

 have been tested here. I gieatly approve of your tabulated 

 form, and would suggest two other columns, one headed Bear- 

 ing Properties, the other Weight of Fruit. We all have letter- 

 weighing machines and can easily weigh our best fruit of each 

 variety, and then it would be seen what success we could 

 airive at in each case. Nearly all my Pear trees — more than 

 eighty in number — are on the Quince, and the greater portion 

 of them are trained upright and are bearing fruit. Peaches, 

 Plums, Cherries, Pears, and Apples, some of each sort, are 

 trained upi ight, at first as an experiment, but the experiment has 

 proved to be so successful that henceforth I shall train every 

 fruit tree upright. I expect every yard in length of a 12-feet 

 wall should yield, when cultivated with Pears or Peaches, 

 annually fifty fruits. Several of my trees do more than this 

 year by year." I am afraid this gentleman amateur in a cold 

 northern county would put to shame many of us professed 

 gardeners who are more favourably situated. 



The difference of opinion between Mr. Luckhuret and myself 

 as to the merits of the two Pears named at page 70 merely 

 proves more forcibly the necessity for local information. If 

 he and others of equal competency will fill up the proposed 

 forms carefully for three successive seasons, from their own 

 experience at the time, I shall attach the same importance to 

 their observations in their several localities as to my own. 

 Of course nothing must be done from hearsay or memory, for, 

 as Mr. Luckhurst truly says, the memory is treacherous and 

 cannot be depended on for this sort of work ; it has great 

 difficulty in driving out old notions, which by the aid of 

 careful chronicling ought to have been exploded long ago. 

 When I wrote of weeding the returns of eccentricities of taste 

 I was thinking more of the general abstracts to be made from 

 the local returns than of the returns themselves. 



I think it is very possible that among the Pears sent out 

 within the last twenty years, some of superior merit will be 

 found to do well over a wide tract of country, and which are 

 at present comparatively unknown. Probably the local returns 

 will have to stand on their own merits. When the general 

 abstracts are made I neither propose to decide by individual 

 taste nor by weight of numbers, but by something between the 

 two. I think the return made by a man of known ability, and 

 who is acknowledged to have a good opportunity of forming 



an opinion, is sure to carry more weight with it than that of 

 one who is not known to have so good a chance of obtaining 

 information. But let it be understood that all I have said on 

 the subject so far are merely crude suggestions. 



I thould be pleased to see Pear-growing become popular 

 among our cottagers ; it would be very interesting to them, 

 and, if well done, highly remunerative. In this neighbourhood 

 there are not many people who ever taste a good Pear, but it 

 is extremely difficult to advise them how to commence cul- 

 tivation. 



Morello Cherries are becoming popular, a good-sized tree 

 often paying a year's rent ; but I can assure our friend Mr. 

 Abbey (see page ti5) the said trees are neither spurred nor 

 have their shoots measured by inches. If the growths are a 

 yard long they are laid-in their full length and bear fruit 

 throughout. Disbudding and pinching a few shoots in spring, 

 and cutting out exhausted shoots after the fruit is gathered, 

 is all the pruning received or required. When the idea is to 

 economise labour and to have a fair return for the same, trees 

 should be trained in the way their natural habit suggests ; and 

 it is just as wide of the mark to spur Morellos and Black Cur- 

 rants as it would be to train an Oak tree to a balloon trellis. 



I would strongly recommend the sficateur (or French pruning 

 shears) for summer-pruning, and indeed for pruning gene- 

 rally, excepting Peaches. It makes a cut almost as clean as 

 the sharpest knife, instead of something between a cut and a 

 squeeze as made by the common pruning shears, and the 

 amount of work one can accomplish in a short time is aston- 

 ishing. — Wm. Tatloe, Longlcat. 



EOSES FEOM CUTTINGS. 



" Philanthes," in his suggestive and seasonable remarks, 

 page 89, opines that July is afar better time to put in cuttings 

 of Eoses than in November or October. I am precisely of the 

 same opinion, having years ago proved, in the first instance 

 accidentally, that cuttings inserted in the summer months 

 take root with more certainty and celerity than if put in at 

 any other period of the year. 



It is now many years ago when budding Eoses that, in- 

 stead of throwing away the shoots from which I had taken 

 the few buds required, I roughly shaped them into cuttings 

 and stuck them into the ground at the base of the Briar stocks. 

 It was a mere mechanical act without any serious thought that 

 the cuttings would strike roots; but they did so. Hardly one 

 failed. 



Since then I have adopted the plan systematically, and have 

 never failed to strike as many Eopes as I required by inserting 

 the cuttings in July or August. The striking under the Briars 

 suggested that some shade was necessary in this summer pro- 

 pagation of Eoses. Subsequent practice has proved this to be 

 so, for when the cuttings have been inserted in an open place, 

 and a period of drought has followed, many of them failed to 

 grow, but when planted in a north border failure has been 

 very rare. 



Cuttings of half, or rather more than half, ripened shoots 

 (i inches in length with all the foliage removed except the top 

 pair of leaves, firmly planted up to these leaves, are almost 

 certain to grow if put in at this season of the year. The main 

 point to aim at is to keep the foliage fresh as long as possible, 

 and to this end a shaded place and occasional sprinklings of 

 water should be afforded. 



Another point to attend to is that the cuttings cannot be 

 too quickly made and put in, for if allowed to lie about until 

 the bark becomes shrivelled they will not prosper. 



Most varieties of Eoses thrive well on their own roots, and 

 some of them better than on stocks. Baronne Prevost on its 

 own roots is much finer and sweeter than when worked, and 

 so is the old Provence Cabbage Eose. Indeed, I have fancied 

 that many Eoses are sweeter when grown from cuttings than 

 when worked on the Briar — certainly such is the case with 

 those I have named. I have had blooms of John Hopper from 

 cuttings growing at the base of the Briar invariably superior 

 to those elevated above them and growing from the Briar 

 stock ; and the same remark applies to the lovely old Eose 

 Coupe d'HebC:. 



If stocks affect the quality of fruits, why should they not 

 exert the same influence on flowers ? As a general rule I 

 believe Eoses are sweeter when on their own roots than they 

 are on any stock, and some of them are finer and most of 

 them more permanent. 



The present is a very good time to put in the cuttings, and 



