228 Review of Loudon's Gardener's Magazine. 



pern)it ; as it is, we can only select a few of the more useful para- 

 graphs. In relation to the cropping of fruit borders with culin- 

 ary vegetables, the writer remarks : 



" It seems to be generally admitted, both by wi-iters on horticulture 

 and by good practitioners, that, when the fruit department must be blend- 

 ed with the culinary one, it is by fiir the best arrangement to place the 

 fruit trees round the margins of the quarters, and to leave the interior 

 completely at the service of vegetables, as well for the sake of economy 

 as of ef!ect. These borders are generally formed from four feet to six 

 feet in width, and are, for the most part, cropped with some kind of 

 vegetable that requires digging. It seems surprising that a border of this 

 width should be deemed too much for a row of trees of this description; 

 but it appeai-s that such is the case ; and, throtigh the. practice just allud- 

 ed to, the upi)er and most valuable roots of the fruit trees are continually 

 cut away, and the trees driven to seek their food in a subsoil of the most 

 ungenial character. Whether trees of this class possess the power of 

 selection in regard to their food, I am not physiologist enough to know ; 

 but, if they do possess it, it would be of little avail when they were situ- 

 ated in a barren sand, clay, or gravel ; besides the great difference in the 

 average temperature of the soil, which temperature does, of course, de- 

 cline progressively downwards to a certain depth. Now, what is the 

 consequence to trees thus situated ? They are rendered doubly liable to 

 the l)light produced by various kinds of insects : as, for instance, the 

 aphides, the scaly insect, the red spider, &c. ; all of which, it is well 

 known, will make way nnich more rapidly on a diseased subject than on 

 a healthy one ; and, very frequently, by these means all the early-made 

 wood is either crippled or destroyed, and a later crop of watery wood is 

 produced at or after midsummer ; which, I hardly need say, is quite im- 

 mature. In trees thus situated, the sap in the shoots is put in motion a 

 long time before that in the roots ; and the consequence is, that leaves 

 are produced chiefly from the fund of sap of the former year deposited 

 in the branches, and which, being of a sweeter character, if 1 may use 

 the expression, tlian the ascending sap, is the very food for the above- 

 named insects, as we find by experience ; and the wood that is produced 

 later is overtaken by the chills of autumn, before the leaves have pei*- 

 formed half their functions. These observations apply most especially 

 to apples ; but they will apply, in some degree, to almost every other 

 kind of fruit tree, if treated in the way here described." 



The following, in relation to pear trees on walls, though not 

 wholly applicable here, where we have but few trees in such situ- 

 ations, may, nevertheless, be read with interest : — 



" As to pears on Avails, although they bear chiefly on spurs from the 

 old wood, after the manner of apricots, &c., yet there is dissimilarity 

 enough to require a somewhat different treatment. In the first ])lace, 

 they cannot endure what I must call a capricious soil ; I mean one that 

 woi-ks by fits and starts ; such are all liglit sandy soils, which derive all, or 

 most of, their virtues fiom manures. Such soils, in June and July, with 

 showery weather, will make pear trees grow more like willow bushes than 

 fruit trees ; whereas in dry not summers the very extreme effects are, of 

 course, produced ; and, although such trees may have a good crop of 

 fruit on, little of it will come to proper perfection, in either size or flavor, 

 or both will be lamentably deficient. But in a strong loamy soil their 

 growth is steady and uniform, in spite of seasons, and can be dei)ended 

 on ; the sap, also, is more easily controlled, or directed, in trees on such 

 soils. It is of the utmost importance, of course, in all modes of training 

 whatever, to get as perfect a command over the ascending sap as possi- 



