S'A 8 The Po?nological Magazine. 



a gardener to have a pear tree with ripe fruit, the name of which he 

 wished to ascertain ; first, he would compare an average specimen of the 

 fruit, leaves, and young wood with tables 1. 4. and 5., and, having fixed on 

 what he considered the sort, prove it by dissection and comparison with 

 table 2. Next he would recur to tasting and comparing with the written 

 description. At Christmas he would prove his name by the old wood, 

 table 6.; in March by the leaf buds, blossom buds, and expanded blossoms, 

 table 3. ; and in June by the full-grown wood and young leaves, as in table 5. 

 With regard to the expense of such tables, we have ascertained from 

 our engravers, Messrs. Vizetelly and Branston of Fleet Street, that they 

 might be printed in colours, in Savage's manner (Gard. Mag., vol. ii. 

 p. 197.), at far less expense than they could be coloured by hand; and, though 

 such coloured tables would not be so refined imitations of nature as 

 drawings, they would come very near them, and probably be sufficient for 

 every useful purpose. But, supposing them to be printed from copper or 

 by the lithographic process, every person acquainted with the subject will 

 allow that they could be produced a great deal cheaper than by the system 

 of separate plates for each variety of fruit. We have before mentioned 

 {Gard. Mag., vol. ii. p. 197.) that similar tables, printed in colours, might 

 be composed of florist's flowers, such as tulips, hyacinths, chrysanthemums, 

 &c. An example, on a small scale, and therefore comparatively imperfect, 

 has been given in a former page. (See the cuts facing p. 322.) 



If it were desirable, it would be a very easy, and not an extravagant busi- 

 ness, to produce models of tables 1. 2. and 6. Moulds, of the size of the 

 tables, might turn out models in plaster of Paris; and these, when dressed 

 and prepared, might probably be coloured on a large scale, by successive 

 tints applied to the moulds, and transferred from them to the models, by 

 returning the latter to their matrices. This, however, may perhaps be too 

 speculative a subject to mention, without going into greater details than we 

 have room for. 



Supposing the Horticultural Society, or, what we consider the same 

 thing, the " two gentlemen intimately connected with it" who edit the 

 Pomological Magazine, were disposed to adopt the tabular method, then, as 

 they have already a great number of drawings and models of the commoner 

 fruits, they might begin, at any period of the year, by publishing tables 

 1. and 2.; and, as trees of all the sorts are in the Chiswick garden, tables 

 5. to 6. inclusive could be got from nature in the course of a year after- 

 wards, and table 7. might stand over for the present. Having given tables 

 of apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, gooseberries, 

 currants, raspberries, and strawberries, the four last of a smaller size, they 

 might then take grapes and pine-apples on a larger size, and, lastly, the less 

 common fruits, putting different species on a table. The probability is, that 

 such tables would be purchased by every nurseryman, and be as common 

 among gentlemen's gardeners as we hope a tabular Gardener's Kalendar 

 now publishing by Mr. Ridgeway will be. 



Having completed such tables, and greatly reduced the number of fruits, 

 or rather of names of fruits, at present in cultivation in the nurseries, a 

 Pomological Magazine might then be commenced, to bring into notice new 

 objects, and to serve as a sort of perpetual appendix to the tables, as the 

 Gardener's Magazine does to the Encyclopaedia of Gardening. The use of 

 such tables to the nurseryman and the country gardener would be imme- 

 diately felt : but the plan of the magazine is such, that, even if it were exe- 

 cuted, it could not supply the place of the tables ; because the different 

 varieties could never be properly compared together. The plan of giving 

 the fruit, with the leaves, blossoms, wood, and other secondary illustra- 

 tions, on the same plate, is less susceptible of perfection than that of giving 

 each kind of illustration in a separate group ; because it may often happen 



