I30 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



fruit ; while apples should be packed in wheat, or better still in 

 rye straw. For long journeys the American system of pack- 

 ing in barrels is anticipated, the apples being carefully put in 

 by hand, and the barrels lined at both ends with straw, but 

 not at the sides to avoid heating, while holes should be bored 

 at either end to prevent heat. Pippins, John Apples, Pear- 

 mains, and other ' keepers ' need not be turned until the 

 week before Christmas, and again at the end of March, when 

 they must be turned oftener ; but never touch fruit during 

 a frost or a thaw, or in rainy weather, or it will turn black. 



Hartlib, a few years after, reckoned no less than 500 sorts of 

 apples in England, though doubtless many of these were iden- 

 tical, since the same apple often has two or three names in one 

 parish. The best for the table were the Jennetings, Harvey 

 Apple, Golden Pippin, Summer and Winter Pearmains, John 

 Apple, &c. ; for cider the Red Streak (the great favourite), 

 Jennet Moyle, Eliot, Stocking Apple, &c. He was told that in 

 Herefordshire a tenant bought the farm he rented with the 

 fruit crop of one year ; ;£^io to ;!^i5 having been given per acre 

 for cherries and more for apples and pears. Pears for the 

 table were the Windsor, 'Burgamet,' 'Boon Christians'! Green- 

 field, and others ; and for perry, which John Beale, a well- 

 known writer of the day considered ' a weak drink, fit for our j 

 hindes and generally refused by our gentry as breeding wind 

 in the stomack ', the Horse Pear, Bosbury, Choak, &c.^ There 

 were many kinds of plums, among them the Mistle Plum, 

 Damazene, Violet, and Premorden. 



Four kinds of grafting were practised : in the cleft, and in 

 the bark, the two most usual ways ; shoulder or whip grafting, 

 and grafting by approach,^ the last ' where the stock you 

 intend to graft on and the tree from which you take your 

 graft stand so near together that they may be joined, then 



^ Bradley, in 1726, gives a long list of pears all with French names, 

 hardly any of which are now known in England. 

 ? Worlidge, Systema Agriculturae, p. 107. 



