TRAINING IMPROVES QUALITY. 427 



Chine, "which flowered most abundantly to the ends of its 

 branches, and was truly a splendid object." 



All roses will not however submit to this process ; it is oiily 

 the free-growing kinds, such as those having a little alpine or 

 Chinese blood in them or bred from the Damask and Provence 

 Roses that really look well. The Gallicas and short-branched 

 sorts in general are unfit for the operation ; which, when well 

 performed upon such sorts as the Coupe d'H6be for example, 

 produces plants unsurpassed for beauty by any ornament of 

 the flower garden. This training should always be performed 

 in mid-winter, when there is little sap in the branches. If 

 delayed till the sap flows in the spring, the branches become 

 brittle, and break instead of bending. 



The last object of training to which it is necessary to advert 

 is that of improving the quality of fruit, by compelling the sap 

 to travel to a very considerable distance. The earliest notice 

 of this, with which I am acquainted, is the following by Mr. 

 Williams of Pitmaston. 



"Within a few years past," he says in 1818, "I have 

 gradually trained bearing branches of a small Black Cluster 

 Grape, to the distance of near fifty feet from the root, and I 

 find the branches every year grow larger, and ripen earlier as 

 the shoots continue to advance. According to Mr. Knight's 

 theory of the circulation of the sap, the ascending sap must 

 necessarily become enriched by the nutritious particles it 

 meets with in its progress through the vessels of the alburnum; 

 the wood at the top of tall trees, therefore, becomes short- 

 jointed and full of blossom-buds, and the fruit there situated 

 attains its greatest perfection. Hence we find Pine and Fir- 

 trees loaded with the finest cones on the top boughs; the 

 largest acorns grow on the terminal branches of the Oak, and 

 the finest mast on the high boughs of the Beech and Chestnut; 

 so likewise Apples, Pears, Cherries, &c., are always best 

 flavoured from the top of the tree." (Hort. Trans., iii. 250 

 251.) The merit of the Fontainebleau mode of training the 

 Vine (Fig. XCIII.), in which many of the stems are carried to 

 very considerable distances, seems to depend in some measure 

 upon this principle ; and there is a well-known Black Hamburgh 



