The System of M. Grin. 185 



The short pinching System applied to the Peach. — ^The 

 system generally known among us as that of M. Grin is confounded 

 by some writers with the cordon system, from which it is entirely 

 distinct. This system has been so much written about in England 

 that many suppose it to be in frequent use in France, or at all 

 events accepted as an improvement by good cultivators. This is 

 not the case. It has not in the least influenced the old way of 

 growing the peach in France, and a commission of first-rate fruit- 

 growers sent to examine it, reported that the system pursued at 

 Montreuil is still much the best. It may be shortly described as an 

 attempt to do away with nailing by a system of close pinching, 

 and that alone is sufficient to condemn it for our gardens, and also 

 for those of the French, for the wood to be well ripened must be 

 nailed in, and the pinching required to keep the shoots from run- 

 ning away from the wall is something prodigious. As the French 

 fruit-growers say — the cultivator who pursues this method had 

 better provide himself with chairs, and place one before each tree 

 to accommodate the person who has to see that the pinching is 

 done at the proper time ! The report of the commission sent to 

 examine this method is as unfavourable to it as anything can be. 

 I translated it with a view of giving it here, but space prevents my 

 doing so, and therefore I sum up its statements in a few words. 

 " This system, which is an attempt to do away with nailing in of the 

 shoots, presents on tlie whole no advantages over the one in 

 common use, but, on the contrary, certain drawbacks." Having 

 read so much about the doings of M. Grin, I was astonished at the 

 very ordinary aspect of his trees, and the by no means remarkable 

 result attained. The individual who pays his penny to see the 

 " blue horse captured in the Black Sea by Captain Jones of the 

 ship Adventurer — the most extraordinary monster ever seen," 

 &c., in the New Cut, and finds the blue horse to be a puny young 

 seal, could not have been more disappointed than was I at the 

 aspect of the trees in this garden. For when one reads of a system 

 as being about to supplant everything else, it is quite natural to 

 expect that it must at ail events possess some merits over the older 



