122 THE MINIATUEE FEUIT GARDEN 



where the climate is sufficiently warm to ripen its fruit, 

 such as the gardens near London, and those in the 

 eastern and southern counties. Fruitfulness and mode- 

 rate growth are brought on by the following method. 

 Trees should be procured of the Angelique, Brown 

 Turkey, White Marseilles, and Early Violet Figs— these 

 are the only kinds that bear freely, and ripen their fruit 

 well ; such trees should be low or half standards, or 

 dwarfs with a clear stem (not bushes branching from the 

 ground). The former should have a stem three feet 

 high, and the latter from one foot to eighteen inches ; 

 in each case the tree should have a nice rounded head. 

 Trees thus selected should be planted in a sunny 

 situation, and require only the following simple mode of 

 treatment. They, we will assume, were planted in 

 March or April. They will make a tolerably vigorous 

 growth, and must be pruned by pinching off the top of 

 every shoot as soon as it has made six leaves, leaving 

 five. The stem must be kept quite clear from young 

 shoots. By the autumn nice round-headed trees will be 

 formed, and about the end of October they should be 

 taken up (their leaves cut off if they have not fallen) and 

 placed in a cellar — no matter if dark, but a light dry 

 cellar would be preferable — some earth should be placed 

 over their roots, and there they may remain till the 

 first week in May, when they should be planted out, 

 and the same routine of culture followed. They will 

 bear one good crop of fruit in a season and ripen it in 

 September. This annual removal brings on great stur- 



