108 THE MODERN PEACH PRUNER. 



trained as diagonal cordons, it is admirable. Late 

 sorts are also best ripened in this way. It might 

 be supposed that by repeated summer-stopping of 

 the shoots, and their grouping on short spurs, in 

 time some inconvenience might be felt by reason 

 of their protruding too far from the wall. But 

 ten seasons of trial have clearly shown me that this 

 is not the case. In the instances where, by neglect 

 or some other cause, these shoots have really lost 

 the advantage of the wall heat, they have been 

 removed, and their loss readily supplied from others 

 better placed. 



At the winter season all ill-placed shoots are 

 thinned out, though it is evidently better not to 

 allow them to grow irregularly during the summer. 

 Mistakes or omissions are more easily remedied 

 under close pruning, than under long pruning, while, 

 in certain cases, we are not debarred from utilising 

 any applicable part of the older system. Close 

 pruning, in some shape, has been always known, 

 but it is only within the last few years that it has 

 been reduced to a system. It now includes as its 

 advocates many of the first names in horticulture. 

 " I accepted it with enthusiam,'' says one eminent 

 man, whose work, in 1863, received the French 

 Imperial sanction, " because it is normal, and in 

 harmony with the laws of vegetation, and of fruc- 

 tification," It would be an error to suppose that 



