80 On the Culture of the Pear Tree. 



afforded fruit, and almost in equal abundance. By this mode 

 of training, the bearing branches, being small and short, may 

 be changed every three or four years, till the tree is a century 

 old, without the loss of a single crop ; and the central part, 

 which is unproductive in every other mode of training, be- 

 comes the most fruitful. When a tree, thus trained, has per- 

 fectly covered the wall, it will have taken very nearly the 

 form recommended by me in a former communication,* 

 except that the small branches necessarily pass down behind 

 the large. I proceed to the management of young trees. 



A young Pear stock, which had two lateral branches upon 

 each side, and was about six feet high, was planted against 

 a wall early in the spring of 1810 ; and it was grafted in 

 each of its lateral branches, two of which sprang out of the 

 stem about four feet from the ground, and the others at its 

 summit, in the following year. The shoots these grafts pro- 

 duced, when about a foot long, were trained downwards, as 

 in the preceding experiment, the undermost nearly perpen- 

 dicularly, and the uppermost just below the horizontal line, 

 placing them at such distances, that the leaves of one shoot 

 did not at all shade those of another. In the next year, the 

 same mode of training was continued, and in the following, 

 that is the last year, I obtained an abundant crop of fruit, 

 and the tree is again heavily loaded with blossoms. 



This mode of training was first applied to the Aston-Town 

 Pear, which rarely produces fruit till six or seven years after 

 the trees have been grafted ; and from this variety, and the 

 Colmar, I have not obtained fruit till the grafts have been 

 three years old. 



* Horticultural Transactions, Vol. i. page 79. 



