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LIX. On Training the Fig-tree. By Thomas Andrew 

 Knight, Esq. F. R. S. fyc. President 



Read March 2, 1819. 



Xf a committee of the most experienced and scientific 

 Members of this Society were to be appointed for the purpose 

 of ascertaining in what manner the Fig-tree might be best 

 trained, so that it should neither ripen its wood nor fruit, I 

 suspect it would require all their skill and ingenuity to point 

 out a much more efficient mode of mismanagement, than that 

 usually adopted in the culture of that fruit-tree. The defects 

 of it, for training to a wall, are the exuberance of its growth, 

 and the consequent excessive production of barren wood, 

 and the great width of its leaves, by which both its young 

 wood and fruit become injuriously shaded. A more effective 

 method of calling into operation the first of these defects 

 could not readily have been invented than that of training 

 the branches perpendicularly upwards ; because this (in 

 common with almost every species of tree) grows most lux- 

 uriantly when trained in that direction ; and, comparatively 

 with its growth, affords the smallest quantity of bearing 

 wood : and it would scarcely be possible to discover a me- 

 thod by which the foliage of the Fig-tree could be made to 

 operate more injuriously, than that of suffering, as is usually 

 seen, a great number of contiguous stems to ascend upwards 

 from the root in parallel lines. It, therefore, is not w onderful 

 that the remark of gardeners in some parts of England, which 

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