FRUIT UNDER GLASS. 157 
The best varieties of plums and pears are, however, worth a 
case or house. Heating with pipes is not required for these fruits 
unless in a very sunless season such as our last one. Heat in the 
pipes would, in the absence of sun, swell the fruit and ripen the 
wood. In addition to paying careful attention to the roots of 
the trees to make them fruitful, the plum requires disbudding and 
laying in yearly young wood, for it usually bears on the two-year- 
old wood, not on the one-year-old wood as in the case of the 
peach. If the laying-in of young wood is neglected for a few 
years in plum-trees, particularly the best kinds, the trees become 
just so many thick bare sticks, 
The watering of borders, especially inside ones, must be care- 
fully attended to, and, as in the case of the peach, one or two 
good waterings in winter are essential. Fly and scale are the two 
most troublesome insects to plums. The fly is easily kept in 
check with syringings of weak soapy water. A weak solution of 
paraffin kills the scale. 
I would restrict the growing of pears under glass to a few 
really good useful sorts, and particularly to those varieties that 
come into use quite late. Beurre Rance is worth giving a good 
bit of glass-space to itself. It is one of our best late pears, but it 
comes to no good growing on the open wall in the North. It 
grows a large size under glass, and with enough of it can be used 
from January to March. Glout Morceau is worth growing under 
glass in the North for December and January. Nec Plus Meuris 
is another valuable late pear, and worth glass-room. Marie 
Louise and Doyenné du Comice are two of our finest pears, and in 
cold districts well worth growing under glass. Either horizontal 
or dwarf trained would do for back walls of houses, but I think 
the cordon-trained pears are most suited for growing under glass ; 
they are more easily managed in the matter of the roots, and 
thereby kept more constantly fruitful than larger trees. _ 
The following varieties of plums I have found to give apd 
heavy crops, either under the glass cope projecting from the top o 
the wall I have described, or in a lean-to house, or a span-roofed 
orchard-house, without fire-heat :—Boulouf, Bryanston pare 
Gage, Coe’s Golden Drop, Early Transparent Gage, Green Gage, 
Jefferson, Kirk’s, Late Transparent, Reine Claude de Bavay, 
Stint. These are all plums of first-class quality and free bearing 
