z8o THE FRUIT GROWER'S GUIDE. 



a Covont Garden salesman, the fruit sent by railway a distance of 52 miles. But this 

 only occurs once in three years, and the mean average gross return is 28 a year per 

 acre. Sometimes a grower realises a large sum for a particular tree carrying a heavy 

 crop of fine fruit, chronicles it, and thereupon calculations are made by optimists 

 or sensationalists. Such records are, if interesting, certainly misleading, and the 

 reason there is no counteracting statement of failures is suggestive of the special 

 pleader land to sell or let or trees for disposal. A widow woman cleared 3 a year 

 every other year for the produce of a Hessle pear tree, and a gardener sold 3 15s- 

 worth of Windsor pears from one tree in a season. Such records require dis- 

 counting 75 per cent, for safe guidance in cultures by the acre and for an average of 

 seasons. 



Taking an average of the production of the trees from the periods of remunerative 

 bearing to the best production 80 bushels =18 gross returns annually per acre- 

 orchard pear-growing is not favourable for those having to send the fruit over 50 miles 

 to market. Mr. Hooper records a better average for Kent placing the commencement 

 of remunerative return in the twelfth and period of best production in the twentieth year, 

 the yield per acre at 2 tons, and the price at 10 per ton = 20 gross returns per annum. 

 Orchard pear trees, however, wax in productiveness with age, and the heirs of the 

 planters certainly find the trees healthier and more profitable than apple trees of the 

 same age, some, perhaps, producing 25 bushels each in a season. With plum or damson 

 trees between the pears the returns are much better in a quarter of a century from 

 planting, and afterwards the profits will surpass those of apple trees on a similar soil, 

 for pear trees are to gravelly and sandy soils what the cherry trees are to deep 

 calcareous gravels long-lived, healthy, and in favourable seasons enormously pro- 

 ductive. 



Plums and Damsons. These succeed almost everywhere and in nearly every soil. 

 The commoner varieties both of plums and damsons do well in garden or orchard fences, 

 and may be planted in hedges near farm and other homesteads. They form capital 

 screens and are advised for shelter. (See Orchard, Vol. I., page 89.) The following 

 varieties the Czar, Sultan, Belgian Purple, Gisborne's, Pershore, Jeiferson, Mitchelson's, 

 Victoria, Prince Engelbert, Diamond, Pond's Seedling, Bush, Monarch, and Archduke 

 plums are suitable for orchards. Early Eivers and Wyedale the earliest and latest 

 best plums are dwarf growers ; Winesour forms a large tree and succeeds on the 

 limestone. The best damsons are Fajleigh or Crittenden, Shropshire or Prune, and 



