THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



and judge of its adaptability to our 

 country when these ripen. Mr. Glen 

 says : — 



" I am sending you to day two 

 Patrick Barry pears, the finest I ever 

 saw. They are even larger than the 

 two I sent which went astray. I paid 



40 cents for them. Please measure, 

 weigh them, and have a full size draw- 

 ing made of them for the Horticul- 

 turist. It is a beautiful sample, in 

 perfect condition, nine months after it 

 was taken from the tree and transported 

 3,500 miles." 



THE DARK AND THE BRIGHT SIDE OF FRUIT 



CULTURE. 



OME years ago, in an incidental 

 discussion on Canadian fruit 

 growing, a cynical friend — 

 a layman as far as com- 

 mercial horticulture is concerned — urged 

 that the worst part of the business 

 seemed to him to be the oscillation be- 

 tween the feast and the famine phases — 

 "Either," he said, "you have a brob- 

 dignagian crop and prices are no good, 

 or else prices are excellent and you have 

 no crop to sell." There was more than 

 a tinge of truth in his philosophizing, 

 and if he could have seen the orchards 

 in '97, and again this year, one could 

 have pardoned him a chuckle of satis- 

 faction at his own wisdom. Last year 

 we cheerfully paid ten to fifteen cents 

 per tree for taking off superfluous 

 peaches ; this year we would with 

 greater cheerfulness have paid twice the 

 amount to have stuck them on. The 

 crop in this part of Ontario is eminently 

 a sporadic one. Smith has a very re- 

 spectable crop indeed, while Brown on 

 the other side of the fence, with equal 

 reason for expecting a crop, finds the 

 fruit conspicuous by its absence. The 

 thing is not always easy of explanation 

 and Brown has to console himself by 

 pointing out to the other fellow that the 

 wicked flourish like a green bay tree. 



The ideal state of things would of 

 course be half a crop and good stiff 



prices, and it remains for us to create 

 these conditions as nearly as possible by 

 selection and extension of markets, by 

 the reduction of too heavy crops by 

 thinning, and generally by the practice 

 of scientific horticultural methods. It 

 is hard to say definitely whether climatic 

 conditions, state of soil, or previous 

 heavy cropping has most to do with 

 producing empty orchards in any given 

 season. One thing is positive, to wit — 

 that plain, obvious causes, such as 

 curled leaf, curculio and so on, largely 

 contribute to bring about such a state 

 of things. It is satisfactory in a way to 

 know that the history of the 'curled 

 leaf fungus has been worked out, and 

 that it has not only local habitation but 

 a name as well. At the same time it is 

 plainly a very dif^cult enemy to control, 

 and though fairly good results have 

 been obtained in Ohio and elsewhere by 

 the ' Bordeaux ' treatment, I cannot say 

 that I have noticed any distinct benefit 

 either with trees that were sprayed last 

 year or this. If spraying is to do any 

 good, it must certainly be not only 

 thorough but very early, and it is possi- 

 ble that a late spraying this fall would 

 mateiially assist in destroying the 

 fungus. The disastrous work of the 

 ' curled leaf during May and June this 

 year clearly established the fact that the 

 question of varieties has a good deal 



346 



