THE MANSE GARDEN. 123 



quire a greater length than is consistent 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 gooseberry tree of the earliest, kind 

 may be trained on some odd piece of wall for the 

 surprise of having fruit a month earlier than any 

 body 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 standards 

 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 apri- 

 cot; 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 little, and is sold in the shops under the 

 name of oakum. In this way the trees occupy little 

 room, and it is easy, as the branches are all loose, to 

 remove annually such as are effete, giving room to 

 those which are in a proper state for bearing. 



The red currant, as a standard, is rendered very 

 productive by a mode of treatment that is nowise gen- 

 tle or promising in appearance. In the season of 

 pruning, let the whole tree be stumped down into 



