VI.] 



TRAINING AND PRUNING. 



171 



and then cut off again all the other shoots of the summer that you 

 have before only pinched off. Then, in the following spring, 

 having now got the trunk of your tree, watch narrowly the shoots 

 that the last year's wood will send out, and choose from among 

 them the three or four most vigorous and most equally placed of 

 them for principal branches, and pinch off all the rest as be- 

 fore directed. When these branches send out their shoots, pinch 

 off those that come too close to one another, and prune them 

 close in winter. In the autumn, prune the principal branches and 

 their shoots that are designed to be secondary branches, precisely 

 as we have directed with regard to wall-trees above ; and, when 

 you have done so two or three years, you may let the tree alone to 

 nature, only cutting out the dead branches as they occur. A tree 

 well formed, and in good ground well cultivated, will last more 

 than a century. Sometimes a vigorous branch will do harm to 

 more fruitful ones, and yet you may, for sound reasons, wish to 

 preserve it. In such a case, slacken its vigour by pruning it very 

 long, or even by ringing it. 



258. ARCHING is done by bending in the form of a half- 

 hoop, more or less open, the branches, and in this way you bring 

 them pointing towards the earth. This situation retards the cir- 

 culation of the sap, and forces it to betake itself to leaf- buds and 

 to transform them into wood-buds. 



2o9. ESPALIER. — This is the form which, in my opinion, is 

 the only one suited for the open ground of a garden. The fanciful 

 affair of arching, for vines or any other tree, is more a matter of 

 pleasure-garden than of kitchen-garden : the other forms are in- 

 tended to promote bearing, and they are all vastly inferior to the 

 espalier in this respect. Apricots obtained in any way except 

 against a wall or a house are seldom good for much ; there are 

 ■a few of the sorts which will bear in other situations ; but the fruit 

 is good for very little. Apples, pears, plums, cherries; and 

 quinces and medlars, all do exceedingly well as espaliers ; and it 

 is notorious that the fruit is always larger and of finer flavour 

 when the tree is trained in this form than when the limbs are suf- 

 fered to go in an upright direction. There are several sorts of 

 pears which will be very fine on espaliers on the very same spot 

 of ground where they will scarcely come to anything like perfec- 

 tion on a standard tree, or upon any tme the limbs of which are 

 suffered to go upright. 



