136 CURRANTS. 



allowing some low growing crops to occupy the 

 intervening space, or they may be set twice as thick, 

 with a view to subsequent thinning as they increase 

 in size. In pruning, endeavour always to give the 

 tree a proper balance on its own stem, and allow 

 no branch to acquire a greater length than is con- 

 sistent with self-support. In this way you are 

 freed from the plague of supporting the fruit with 

 forked sticks, or seeing it laid along the ground 

 and covered with the slime of snails. A goose- 

 berry tree of the earliest kind may be trained 

 on some odd piece of wall for the surprise of having 

 fruit a month earlier than anybody else ; and a few 

 may be fastened to poles, and carried to any height, 

 lopping off all the branches, save two or three, 

 which must be tied as they advance in growth, and 

 which will thus yield a great deal of fruit without 

 occupying almost any room. 



Currants, black or red, do well either as stand- 

 ards or trained on a wall. On that of a north 

 aspect you may have red currants so late in the 

 season as the frost will suffer them to hang on the 

 tree. It is worth while to train the red and white 

 currant on a wall in the manner of other fruit 

 trees, as they bear on spurs or snags, and the same 

 branches yield a crop for many years ; but the 

 black currant, which requires a constant succession 

 of young wood, if treated in this way would take 

 as much nailing as a peach or apricot; and as it is 

 little worthy of so much pains, it may be held to 

 the wall with a line of tarred cord, which costs 



