VI.] 



LIST bF FRUITS. 



187 



of the limb ; and, when the limbs have attained their proper length, 

 the shoot at the end of each limb should also be annually cut off, 

 so that the tree, when it has received its pruning, consists of a 

 certain number of limbs, looking like so many rugged sticks, with 

 bunches of spurs sticking out of them, as in plate 11. On these 

 spurs come the fruit in quantities prodigious. If you neglect to 

 prune in the manner here directed, the centre of the tree becomes 



PLATE 11. 



crowded with wood, and the small quantity of fruit, that comes 

 near the point of the limbs, is very poor and small. This method of 

 pruning currants (and, as will be seen by-and-by, that of gooseber- 

 ries is nearly the same) is amongst the very greatest of improvements 

 in gardening, and is a discovery to be ascribed solely to the mar- 

 ket-gardeners in the neighbourhood of London, like a great many 

 other things in the art of gardening, in which they far excel all the 

 rest of the world. Mr. Marshall in his book on gardening, and 

 the French authors in all their books, describe a method very differ- 

 ent indeed from this, which is at once so simple and so efficacious, 

 causing to be produced such immense quantities of fruit and 

 always of the best quality : hanging to one single joint of a currant- 

 tree, in the market gardens, you frequently see as much fruit as 

 will fill a plate. One tree pruned in this manner is equal to more 

 than six trees pruned in the manner practised in general through-^ 

 out the country. But these gardeners excel all the world in every 

 thing that they undertake to cultivate ; they beat all the gentle- 

 men's gardeners in the kingdom : nothing ever fails that depends 

 upon their skill, and I should be ungrateful, indeed, if I did not 

 acknowledge that I have learned more from them than from all 

 the books that I have read in my life, and from all that I ever saw 



