CHAPTER XII. 



Columnar and Pendtdous Training Pear Growing on 

 Railway Embankments Suggestions towards Improve- 

 mentShort Pinching as applied to the Peach Peach 

 Culture at Montreuil. 



|lG. 54 represents a mode of training to be seen here and 

 there in France. The woodcut shows a fully-formed tree 

 before the winter pruning takes place, and, as will be seen 

 at a glance, it is an erect stem densely furnished with short-fruiting 

 branches. This form is considered better than the pyramidal one, 

 where saving of space is a consideration, and where we do not wish 

 the trees to much shade the crops between them. They are also 

 well suited for small gardens where a large number of varieties 

 cannot be afforded space if trained in the usual way. I have thought 

 it worthy of a figure, but except on the quince in suitable soils it 

 is not likely to present many advantages j for if on the pear and 

 confined thus closely to a fastigiate bundle of shoots, it would in all 

 probability run too high to permit of proper annual pruning or 

 of the crop being gathered with convenience. Judging by the 

 strength and thickness displayed by our old horizontal wall trees 

 grafted on the pear stock, what should we arrive at if we adopted a 

 contracted form like this, or the single erect or oblique cordon, with 

 trees worked on the pear ? Why, in a few years, and especially 

 with the cordons, we should have objects more like rustic gate- 

 posts than trees. 



