106 PRUIT GARDEN. 
length will depend on their individual vigor, and the luxu- 
riance of the tree. The buds, which are generally double, 
or rather two together, with a fruit bud between them, 
seldom occur quite close to the insertion of the shoot. 
Perhaps two or three pairs are left with a wood bud at 
the point to afford a growing shoot, in order to act as its 
lungs, for it is necessary that there should be leaves above 
the fruit. The extent of thinning of the fruit must depend 
on the vigor of the tree; a pair of fruit to each square 
foot of wall being an average allowance. When the fruit 
begins to swell, the point of this leading shoot is pinched 
off, that it may not drain away the sap. Any young shoot 
from the wood-eyes at the base of the bearing branch is 
carefully preserved, and in the following winter it takes 
the place of the branch which has borne fruit, and is cut 
out. If there be no young shoot below, and the bearing 
branch be short, the shoots at the point of the latter are 
pruned for fruit; but this must be done cautiously; and 
if the bearing branch be long, it is better to cut it back for 
young wood. It is the neglect of this which constitutes 
the principal error of the English fan system as it is usual- 
ly practiced. Several times during summer the trees are 
regularly examined: the young shoots are respectively 
topped and thinned out: those that remain are nailed to 
the wall, or braced in with pieces of peeled willow, and the 
whole trees are occasionally washed with the force-pump. 
The Montrueil form is described at length in the Horti- 
cultural Tour, p. 249, or in the Cad. Hort. Mem., vol. iv. 
- p. 145. The principal feature constitutes the great princi- 
ple of all French training, the suppression of the direct 
channel of the sap. Four, more commonly two, mére 
branches are so laid to the wall that the central angle con- 
