136 Fruits and Fru it- Trees. 



A great merit with the Red Currant is that for the 

 bushes to over-crop themselves is nearly impossible. 

 Apple-trees, pear-trees, plum-trees, may, in favourable 

 seasons, bear so profusely that the following year they 

 are almost powerless. No such failure ever interrupts the 

 even serenity of Red-currant life. Diffusing its roots near 

 the surface of the ground, and a capital forager, the Red 

 Currant soon regains all that it gives. Like a liberal 

 heart, which always fills as fast as it empties, let the crop 

 be ever so heavy, twelve months afterwards it is ready, 

 like the lilies, to begin anew. The only particular need 

 is judicious pruning. The young shoots should always be 

 thinned out during the summer; the best and largest fruit 

 being always borne upon the shoots or "spurs" of the 

 current year, which, if they are to do their work well, must 

 be vigorous and well ripened, a condition secured for them 

 only by clearing away the superfluity of young green twig. 

 All kinds of ligneous fruit-plants are the better for having 

 the summer-shoots well thinned out as soon as formed. 

 The removal of them is useful to the crop in hand, which 

 is better reached by the sunshine, and the wood for the 

 year to follow is knit more strongly. In order to secure 

 very large and handsome currants, either red or white, the 

 young shoots, at the time of the usual winter-pruning, 

 should be shortened to a length of about two inches, the 

 appearance thus given being somewhat that of the stumps 

 in an osier-bed; not pretty, it must be confessed, but 

 eminently conducive to the end in view. If beautiful 

 effect is specially wished for, it is obtained by training the 



