Book IV. 



TRAINING. 



413 



390 



neral, the latter mode is preferable (Jig. 389.), as distributing the sap or vigor of the tree 

 more equally. 



2147. Oblique training resembles the two last, with this difference, that the lateral 

 shoots are trained obliquely to the main stem. It is particularly adapted for cherries. 

 Thouin remarks, that the shoots should not be raised above an angle of forty-five degrees, 

 unless in the case of a very weak shoot, which, for one season, may be led perpendicularly ; 

 nor lowered below the horizontal line, unless in the case of an excessively strong gourmand 

 or water-shoot. The angle of forty-five degrees indeed is recommended by the French 

 writers, as the best for all shoots of fm it-trees to assume, whether by the training against 

 walls or the pruning of standards. See the articles Espalier and Treille in Cours Complet 

 (V Agriculture, &c. 



2148. Perpendicular training is performed by leading one horizontal shoot from each 

 side of the stem, and within a foot or eighteen inches of the ground ; the shoots which 

 proceed from these are led up perpendicularly to the top of the wall ; sometimes such 

 shoots are trained in the screw or serpentine manner, particularly in vines and currants 

 which bear remarkably well in this form. This is the original mode of training practised 

 by the Dutch, and is still more common in Holland and Flanders than any where else. 



2149. Stellate training refers chiefly to standards trained on walls, or what by some are 

 called riders. The summit of the stem being elevated six or eight feet from the ground 

 by its length, the branches are laid in like radii from a centre. 



2150. The open fan 

 (jig. 390.) is a mode of 

 training described by 

 Professor Thouin, and 

 exemplified in the Jar- 

 din des Plantes. It does 

 not appear to differ 

 much from a mode de- 

 scribed by Knight, which 

 he applied to the peach, 

 and considers, with a 

 little variation, appli- 

 cable, even with supe- 

 rior advantages, to the 

 cherry, plum, and pear- 

 tree. This form, he 

 adds, " might with much 

 advantage be given to 



trees whilst in the nursery ; and perhaps it is the only form which can be given without 

 subsequent injury to the tree." There is nothing very peculiar in this form the first and 

 second year of training (a, b), after being headed down ; but in the third year (c), the 

 reversing of the lateral shoots (d), becomes a characteristic. 



2151. Wavy or curvilinear training, Haywood considers as combining " all the grand 

 requisites stated to be produced" by the modes recommended by other writers on fruit- 

 trees. " The stems (Jig. 391. a) being two prineipal branches through which the sap will 



391 



flow in equal portions from the root, to the length of three feet, before it is permitted to 

 form collaterals, the same effect will be produced as if the whole sap was to pass up a 

 single stem of a standard of six feet, which is justly observed by Bradley, ' to make 

 fruit-branches in such plenty, that hardly any barren shoots are to be found upon 

 them.' It also is conformable to the idea of Hales, that ' light, by freely entering 

 the extended surfaces of leaves and flowers, contributes much to the ennobling the 

 principles of vegetables.' By avoiding the precise horizontal position in which Hitt 



