MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT TREES, &c. 65 



On the 20th of June, (same month will do for America), 

 I headed several standards that were almost destroyed by the 

 canker ; some of them were so loaded with fruit the following 

 year, that I was obliged to prop the branches, to prevent their 

 being broken down by the weight of it. In the fourth year af- 

 ter these standards were headed down, one of them bore two 

 thousand eight hundred and forty pears. There were three 

 standards on the same border with the above, |;wo of which 

 were St. Germains ; the old tree was of the sanpie kind. One 

 of these trees*, twenty years old, had five hundred pears on it, 

 which was a great crop for its size : So that there were on the 

 old tree, which had been headed down not quite four years, 

 two thousand three hundred and forty pears more than on the 

 tree of twenty years growth. 



When the men numbered the pears, there was near a bar- 

 row full of wind-falls at the bottom of the old tree, which were 

 not included. 



Plate 8 is a correct drawing of an old decayed Beurre 

 pear-tree, (restored from an inch and a half of bark) which 

 now covers a wall sixteen feet high-j*. In the year 1796, it bore 

 four hundred and fifty fine large pears, and has continued in a 

 flourishing state ever since. The letters «, a, represent the 

 fruit buds for the present year ; ^, ^, are those forming for 

 next year ; and c, c, c, the old foot-stalks that bore the fruit last 

 year: The small buds are beginning to form, which produce 

 fruit the second year ; and are the fore-right shoots as 



they appear before they are cut, which must be at ^, close to a 

 bud, leaving them as regular as possible all over the tree ; you 

 will then have a regular crop of fruit from the stem to the ex- 

 tremities of the branches : but if this be not observed, you 

 will have hardly any fruit next year. 



The following is the method which I pursue in training 

 trees that are cut near to the place where they were grafted. 



Every year, in the month of March (middle of April for 

 America), I shorten the leading shoot to a foot or eighteen 

 inches, according to its strength ; this shoot will, if the tree 

 be strong, grow from five to seven feet long in one season ; 



* This tree was about six years old when I planted it, fourteen years 



»go. 



t I saw this tree, as, indeed, I did all the others that are represented In 

 the plates, at the end of the work ; and a most gratifying sight it was to me. 

 The remains of the old bark were easily distinguishable from the new bark, 



which looked precisely like that of a young tree The same operation would 



produce the same effects in standards as well as wall trees, and in America as 

 well as in England, 



