BY TRAINING DOWNWARDS. 425 



render plants fruitful. Mr. Knight was the first to recommend 

 the practice, in the following account of his recovery of an oM 

 and worthless Pear-tree. 



" An old St. Germain Pear-tree, of the spurious kind, had 

 been trained in the fan form, against a north-west wall in my 

 garden, and the central branches, as usually happens in old 

 trees thus trained, had long reached the top of the wall, and 

 had become wholly unproductive. The other branches afforded 

 but very little fruit, and that never acquiring maturity was 

 consequently of no value ; so that it was necessary to change 

 the variety, as well as to render the tree productive. To attain 

 these purposes, every branch which did not want at least 

 twenty degrees of being perpendicular was taken out at its 

 base ; and the spurs upon every other branch, which I intended 

 to retain, were taken off closely with the saw and chisel. Into 

 these branches, at their subdivisions, grafts were inserted at 

 different distances from the root, and some so near the extre- 

 mities of the branches, that the tree extended as widely in the 

 autumn after it was grafted, as it did in the preceding year. 

 The grafts were also so disposed, that every part of the space 

 the tree previously covered was equally well supplied with 

 young wood. 



"As soon, in the succeeding summer, as the young shoots 

 had attained suf&cient length, they were trained almost perpen- 

 dicularly downwards, between the larger branches and the wall, 

 to which they were nailed. The most perpendicular remaining 

 branch upon each side was grafted about four feet below the 

 top of the wall, which is twelve feet high; and the young 

 shoots, which the grafts upon these afforded, were trained 

 inwards, and bent down to occupy the space from which the 

 old central branches had been taken away; and therefore very 

 little vacant space remained any where in the end of the first 

 autumn. A few blossoms, but not any fruit, were produced by 

 several of the grafts in the succeeding spring; but in the 

 following year, and subsequently, I have had abundant crops, 

 equally dispersed over every part of the tree; and I have 

 scarcely ever seen such an exuberance of blossom as this tree- 

 presents in the present spring." {Hort. Trans., ii. 78.) 



