194 THE PEACH AND MECTAKINE. 



one limb goes the beauty and nsefulnesa of the tree is at once 

 destroyed. 



Peaches may also be trained horizontally ; but the above objections are 

 even stronger against this mode of training than the French and Mr. 

 Hayward's systems, already pointed out: Of late years the cordon system 

 of training peaches has been introduced into England, and is practised to 

 some extent both out of doors and under glass. Though it can hardly 

 be said to take freely among cultivators, nevertheless it has many sub- 

 stantial merits — not the least among them being that, should canker or 

 other diseases attack the trees, the disease or death of one makes but a 

 small blank in a house or on a wall, and is readily replaced. Besides, 

 with a proper system of pinching and pruning, cordon peaches are 

 exceedingly fertile, and the fruit of large size and high quality. 



Peaches are also, of course, readily trained into bushes or pyramids in 

 houses or orchard houses. The fancy training of peaches is hardly known 



Fio. U. Fia. 16. Pig. 15. 



in England, though it is common in France, The young wood of the 

 peach is pliable almost as the willow, and, of course, skiH, time, and 

 patience may train its branches into initials, names, and devices, or 

 fanciful forms of any kind. But these belong rather to the whims and 

 pastimes of cultivators than the serious business of cultivation. 



We will now proceed to give a few illustrations and explanations of the 

 different modes of peach training to which we have referred. 



The result of heading down (Pig. 12, p. 191) to three or four eyes 

 would be to produce Pigs. 14 and 15. During the next summer the 

 number of branches grown would depend very much on the mode of 

 summer treatment adopted. Towards the end of the third or fourth 

 season the equal fan, as it is called, would have advanced into Pig. 16. 

 Prom this stage the progress to Pig. 17 is merely a matter of time and 

 patience. With a good start the trees bulk into size without losing their 

 true form. It will be observed that the young wood proceeds from any 

 and every point of the leading shoots, either above or below, or wherever 



