248 ON RINGING THE STEMS OR BRANCHES OF FRUIT-TREES. 



I am not friendly to the process of ringing, in whatever manner it may 

 be performed ; and I think it never should be adopted unless in cases 

 where blossoms cannot be otherwise obtained, or where, in very early 

 forcing, the value of a single crop of fruit exceeds the value of the tree. 

 For it is a process which promotes the expenditure, whilst it diminishes 

 the creation, of the vital fluid of the tree, which must also suffer in all 

 subsequent periods, from the organic injuries it sustains. 



XLII. UPON THE CULTURE OF THE FIG-TREE, IN THE STOVE. 

 [Read before the HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, July 18th, 1820.] 



IN a communication respecting the effects of very high temperature 

 upon certain species of plants, which was addressed by me to the Horti- 

 cultural Society in the last autumn*, I stated that fig-trees of one variety 

 had afforded four successive crops in the same season. The fourth crop, 

 at that period, was only beginning to ripen, and I thought the fruit 

 somewhat inferior in quality to that which had ripened early in the 

 season ; but the subsequent portion of it proved most excellent ; and some 

 figs, which were gathered upon Christmas-day, were thought by myself, 

 and a friend who was with me, much the best we had ever tasted. The 

 same plants have since ripened four more crops, being eight within twelve 

 months ; and upon a ringed branch of one year old, and about an inch 

 in diameter, a ninth crop, consisting of sixty figs, will ripen within the 

 next month. I possess only two plants, each growing in a pot, which 

 contains something less than fourteen square inches of mould, and 

 occupying together a space equal to about sixty-four square feet of the 

 back wall of my pine-stove ; from which space the number of figs that 

 have been gathered within twelve months has been little, if any, less than 

 three hundred : and I see every prospect of a succession of crops till 

 winter. 1 therefore send the following account of the mode of culture 

 which has been employed, in the hope that it may prove useful to those 

 who are sufficiently admirers of the fig to think it deserving a place in 

 the forcing-house. 



My trees grow, as I have stated in the communication to which I have 

 above alluded, in exceedingly rich mould, and are most abundantly 

 supplied with water which holds much manure in solution. They 

 consequently shoot with great vigour, notwithstanding the small space 



* See above, page 239. 



