TRAINING. 193 



most other trees. The lines of beauty, and such there are in plenty in good 

 training', are less stable and more facile in regard to peaches than, for 

 example, in pears. When once the foundations of form are well and truly 

 laid in regard to the latter, they may last for a lifetime. But the foundations 

 themselves change in reference to peaches. This arises chiefly from the 

 fact that peaches bear their fruit on the wood of the current year. They 

 may ^e forced to fruit on spurs of a sort, but such unnatural forcing is 

 neither profitable nor desirable in our climate. Hence the importance of 

 adopting such a form of training as will most readily admit of the con- 

 stant cutting away of the old wood and the laying in of the new. 



There is 'no mode of training that admits of this with such facility 

 as that termed the fan system. Everyone is famihar with a lady' s fan 

 when in use, or, better still, a peacock' s tail, as the side ribs of the open 

 feathers afford no bad though a crowded illustration of the bearing wood 

 of the peach ranged on either side of its leading shoots in fan training. 

 Fan training not only affords excellent facilities for renewing trees and 

 furnishing wall spaces afresh, but is also capable of many modifications 

 of form, most of them distinguished by more or less merit. The most 

 common mode is the equal or open fan, in which all the branches are 

 equally distributed at as nearly as possible equal distances over the wall, 

 starting from horizontal lines at the bottom, and filling in the semi- 

 spherical spaces with branches at equal distances. The stellate fan can 

 only be applied to riders, as the branches radiate from the bole of the 

 tree in all directions, dotmwards as well as upwards, at equal angles 

 and equal distances, Kke the outspread feelers of a starfish. 



Seymour's mode of fan training is, without doubt, taking all things 

 into account, the best. The branches may be regulated with as much 

 precision as geometrical lines, and as the central shoot is mostly pre- 

 served to develop the side branches where wanted, the framework of 

 the tree is more regularly laid and preserved than in any other form 

 whatever. 



Hayward's system differs from this in giving a curve to the branches, 

 and in often having two centres to his trees instead of one. The latter 

 is rather objectionable, as, of course, should either give way, the 

 symmetry and beauty of the tree is ruined. 



This last system is a good deal like what is termed the open fan or 

 Montreul training. The trees generally in this case have two horizontal 

 branches, and from these the subordinate boughs diverge in different 

 directions and at certain angles, so as to cover the wall with regularity 

 and despatch. The chief objection to these modes of training, in which the 

 symmetry and usefulness of the trees depend on one or more main Umbs, 

 is the liability of peaches to canker in our climate, and, of course, if 



