By Mr. Robert Errington. 



301 



repeated, and perhaps a third time, on all the larger wounds. This I 

 have found of eminent use, for I believe it is a tolerably well known 

 fact, that the entrance of air and moisture into such wounds is in 

 many cases the cause of premature decay. The wounds being 

 dressed in this manner, I immediately stove the house with sulphur 

 blended with sawdust and burnt in shallow pans, and afterwards 

 dress the tree over two or three times with soft soap, sulphur and 

 tobacco water, brushing it carefully into every bud and crevice with 

 a painting brush ; this mixture is not made so strong as recom- 

 mended by some of our gardening authors, as I depend much on 

 the careful brushing and flooding every part of the tree. 



At the commencement of forcing, the same routine is pursued as 

 before described, and I may here remark on the evil effects of high 

 temperature at night, for as I before observed I have had my 

 Thermometer as low as thirty-four degrees at night, when the fruit 

 was as large as Peas without any injury whatever ; now this has 

 been through sheer necessity, for in my anxiety to get fruit early, 

 I should have kept it probably to nearly fifty degrees could I have 

 obtained that heat, but I am convinced that it would have been 

 worse for the tree ; for one of the necessary consequences that ensues 

 in a case of the kind, is the elongation of the internode, as 

 Botanists term it, which lengthening, if it be not the cause, is well 

 known as a sign of barrenness. From the period that the fruit are 

 beginning to swell off, until they commence ripening, my trees have 

 most copious syringings and steamings, excepting that in the months 

 of February or March, in cold dull weather, I am a little more 

 niggardly of water, taking care especially that if I syringe in the 

 afternoon, it be done early, so as to have the leaves dry by the 

 evening ; as a temperature of thirty-four degrees to forty degrees by 

 night and a wet leaf would by no means agree. The house is of 

 course fumigated twice or thrice, or in fact on the very first appear- 

 ance of green fly. As for red spider, I seldom by this management 

 see one. 



