Retrospective Criticism, 365 



telle. They were planted in February 1813, and had previously been two 

 years trained in the nursery. The first year I cut them back from two thirds 

 to one half their length ; the next year they were shortened somewhat less, 

 and in the third season very little. As they now had furnished wood suffi- 

 cient to form a good fan-shaped tree, they never were afterwards shortened. 

 To fill the wall effectually, as the trees advanced, shoots were laid in between 

 the main branches, and the whole of the superfluous breast wood was con- 

 stantly cut away within an eye or two of the stem, as it was created. Thus 

 the whole surface of the tree was exposed during the summer to all the 

 light and heat its situation was capable of affording j and this was all the 

 pruning the plants appeared to require. The system of not cutting away 

 the breast wood before the end of summer, I have always considered to be 

 bad ; because the redundancy of sap and shade are the chief agents in ste- 

 rility. Vegetable physiologists are at variance ; but it is a well known fact 

 in the anatomy of plants, that every shoot in its embryo state contains the 

 rudiments of a blossom, and that it requires only a certain modification of 

 the vegetable fibre and the juices of the tree to convert it into blossom, and 

 this conversion can only be produced by light and heat acting on the requi- 

 site degree of sap. I am confident that I could cause the most luxuriant 

 sort of tree that Mr. Saunders has described to produce blossoms and fruit 

 in a short time, by giving it a scanty supply of earth to its roots, leaving the 

 wood the full length, and exhaling its redundant and watery juices by expo- 

 sure to the light and heat. 



Mr. Saunders attaches much consequence to the mode of winter pruning, 

 but I do not. It is true that every plant has some habits peculiar to itself, 

 but the whole are subject to the same general laws, and may, with very little 

 variation, be pruned in a similar manner. To render an exuberant pear 

 tree, planted in a rich border, fertile by any act of pruning, would just be 

 synonymous with restoring health to a luxurious glutton, diseased with indi- 

 gestion, by giving the best-prepared medicine, and suffering him at the same 

 time to continue his over-feeding. To prune is merely to cut away superfluous 

 wood, and a goat first taught mankind to do so ; it has, in the winter sea- 

 son, little or no influence in the production of future blossom buds, for 

 these we must look to the earth and atmosphere. Those who have read 

 Mr. Harrison's complex and laboured definitions of the art, and seen the 

 trees on the west and east walls in the Wortley garden, will readily admit 

 the validity of these assertions. There are some persons who are great 

 advocates for grafting the pear on quince and other feeble stocks, and Mr. 

 Saunders appears to be a convert to this system ; but to insert trees of such 

 opposite constitutions as Mr. Saunders has mentioned on the same kind of 

 stock would be exceedingly wrong. Surely, to manage these things by the 

 border is more preferable, because it is so much under the control of the 

 gardener. But, with regard to grafting the pear on different kinds of stocks, 

 I have had considerable experience j and the best stock, in my estimation, 

 to moderate the growth and induce early and permanent fruitfulness, is the 

 Swan's Egg pear ; for I never saw a pear tree of any age grafted on quince 

 or other puny stocks, that did not exhibit those marks of disease consequent 

 on poverty. Mr, Torborn, a gardener of great celebrity, at Ashridge Park, 

 has published, in the Transactions of the Horticultural Society, a comparative 

 estimate of pears grafted on their own and on quince stocks. But the trees 

 at Ashridge on free stocks, like those at many other places, were too luxu- 

 riantly circumstanced to yield much fruit. From what I observed of Mr. Tor- 

 bom's fruitful trees, they did not equal my own in the quantity or the excellence 

 of the produce. I may here mention that the most formidable rival I ever 

 had to encounter, in the cultivation of this fruit, was the old farmer whose 

 tree I noticed in my preceding paper : he took much delight in his garden, 

 though he knew no more of vegetable physiology than a child, and all the 

 assistance the tree ever received from his hands was, I believe, to fasten 



