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LX. On the Culture of the Pear Tree. By Tuomas ANDREW 
Knicut, Esq. F.R.S. @&c.* 
Tue pear-tree exercises the patience of the planter during a 
longer period, before it affords fruit, than any other grafted tree 
which finds a place in our gardens ; and though it is subsequently 
very long-lived, it generally, when trained to a wall, becomes in 
a few years unproductive of fruit, except at the extremities of its 
lateral branclies. Both these defects are, however, I have good 
reason to believe, the result of improper management ; for I have 
lately succeeded most perfectly in rendering my o/d trees very 
productive in every part, and my young trees have almost always 
afforded fruit the second year after being grafted, and none 
have remained barren beyond the third year. 
In detailing the mode of pruning and culture I have adopted, 
I shall probably more easily render myself intelligible, by de- 
scribing, accurately, the management of a single tree of each. 
An old St. Germain pear-tree, of the spurious kind, had been 
trained, in the fan form, against a North-west wall in my gar- 
den, and the central branches, as usually happens in old trees 
thus trained, had long reached the top of the wall, and had be- 
come wholly unproductive. ‘The other branches afforded but 
very little fruit, and that never acquiring maturity, was conse- 
_ quently of no value ; so that it was necessary to change the va- 
riety, as well as to render the tree productive. 
To attain these purposes, every branch which did not want at 
least twenty degrees of being perpendicular, was taken out at 
its base; and the spurs upon every other branch, which I in- 
tended to retain, were taken off closely with the saw and chisel. 
Into these branches, at their subdivisions, grafts were inserted at 
different distances from the root, and some so near the extre- 
miities of the branches, that the tree extended as widely in the 
autumn, after it was grafted, as it didin the preceding year. The 
grafts were also so disposed, that every part of the space the tree 
previously covered was equally well supplied with young wood. 
As soon in the succeeding summer as the young shoots had 
attained sufficient length, they were trained almost perpendicu- 
larly downwards, between the larger branches and the wall to 
which they were nailed. The most perpendicular remaining 
branch upon each side was grafted about four fect below the top 
of the wall, which is twelve feet high; and the young shoots, 
which the grafts upon these afforded, were trained inwards, and 
bent down to occupy the space from which the old central 
branches had been taken away, and therefore very little vacant 
space any where remained in the end of the first autumn. A 
* From the Transactions of the London Horticultural Society. ; 
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