ANTIQUITY OF FRUIT 



fruit trees. On arrival in England, the 

 label on a plum tree having been lost, 

 the gardener being ignorant of its name, 

 called it from its color " green " and its 

 employer's name Gage — thus "green- 

 gage." 



But what our ancestors boasted of 

 and what they were proudest of, were 

 cherries. We even read that cherries 

 were planted in England one hundred 

 years before Christ, whilst in 1540 an 

 orchard of 32 trees produced 1,000 

 quarts which were sold strung along 

 sticks and peddled from house to house. 

 The Court of James I. amused them- 

 selves, having matches who could eat the 

 most cherries, one would imagine a doc- 

 tor would be needed after one of the 

 Court ladies managing to gorge 20 lbs., 

 beating her opponent by 2)4 lbs., with 

 a serious illnesss as the result. 

 Grapes also were planted and tended 

 with care the clergy being most clever in 

 managing vineyards. The Bishop of 

 Hereford in 1289 excelled in wine- 

 making, making from his vineyard 7 

 pipes— 882 gallons of white wine' and i 

 pipe of serjuice. Adulteration was a 



severe crime ; Henry VI having ordered 

 in 1427, 16,200 gallons of wine which 

 was adulterated to be poured into the 

 street and the culprit to suffer the loss 

 of his hands. A severe frost damaged 

 the fruit in 1257, the English having a 

 great scare thinking there would be 

 none. One good deed of Henry HI. 

 before his death, was to order 2,000 

 chestnuts to be planted in his park. A 

 yearly item of fruit for the table of 

 Edward I. being ^1^21 14s. i^d — 

 $108.53. In his reign we first read of 

 the orange being introduced, seven 

 being brought from Spain in 1290. 

 But its use being very different from 

 ours now, for Cardinal Wolsey having 

 removed the flesh inside substituted a 

 sponge soaked in aromatic vinegar as a 

 precaution against pestilential airs. 

 Thus we, who devote our whole time to 

 fruit culture, only follow in the footsteps 

 of those who have pursued the same 

 lines, with the exception only — having 

 much more improved varieties and im- 

 proved methods 



Nigel Keep. 

 Winona. 



JAPAN PLUM— SPRAYING WITH LYE, ETC. 



HAVE tried a number of Japan 

 plums and Russian apricots; sortie 

 of each winter-killed, while others 

 have made a fine growth, but al- 

 though four years planted have not 

 blossomed yet. There are some blos- 

 som buds on them now and possibly 

 there may be some result from them 

 next season. For bark louse I have 

 sprayed my trees with kerosene emul- 

 sion, with not very satisfactory results 

 although tried persistently for several 

 seasons, choosing the time when the 

 young lice are moving on the young 

 branches. My brother has used instead 



lye from hard wood ashes diluted to i 

 part lye and 2 parts water — with most 

 satisfactory results. Some of his trees 

 (15 years old) were so badly infested 

 that they were almost dead and alto- 

 gether unfruitful, but under the lye 

 spraying treatment are quite revived and 

 have nice clean bark. I am so con- 

 vinced of the superiority of lye as a 

 spray that I will use it instead of kero- 

 sene emulsion in future. 



D. S. McDonald, 

 Glendyer Mills ^ Mabou, C. B., Nova 

 Scotia. 



199 



