THE CORDON SYSTEM OF FRUIT GROWING. 349 



successful. The fruits attain a considerable size^ and the 

 experiment promises so well that preparations are being 

 made to greatly extend it.^^ Is there magic in the air^ that 

 there should be so much difference in the behaviour of trees 

 separated by a few miles of sea? In many continental 

 districts where frosts are quite as severe as here^ the 

 cordons escape yearly without injury ; and besides^ no 

 form of tree is so easily protected in springs it being so 

 very low. 



One distinguished horticulturist attacked the system by 

 declaring that he had tried it alongside of grass walks ; that 

 the shoots grew as big as broom-handles^ and the slugs ate 

 any fruit that happened to occur in such unlikely covert — 

 one can hardly call it fruit wood. But in this case the error is 

 clear. He planted a Crab or a Doucin stock, which grew 

 too much, and which it is perfect folly to plant in the 

 hope of having a satisfactory result as a horizontal cordon. 

 The shoots from trees grafted on the Paradise stock never 

 grow as above described, and may be kept within bounds 

 with very ordinary attention. 



In addition to the objections above stated, some are good 

 enough to observe that the cordons may, under certain 

 circumstances, be desirable for amateurs, but that prac- 

 tically they are to be regarded as toys. If, as I believe, 

 they will supplant our present mode of cultivating the 

 Apple as a standard, half- standard, pyramid and bush 

 tree, they will prove toys only in the sense in which a 

 guinea is a toy compared with a penny piece. I have urged 

 the advantages of imj)roved orchard culture so much that it 

 is needless to renew my commendation of it here ; what I ad- 

 mire in the horizontal cordon is that it is the simplest 

 mode of doing away with the gouty old Apple trees which 

 now in multitudes of cases shade our gardens and haunt 

 them with ugliness. Moreover, as people rarely let them have 

 their own way as when grown in orchards, they form a last- 

 ing puzzle to the pruner, who, in cutting them in annually, 

 merely makes them uglier, more vigorous, and less useful. 



As to my reasons for being more than ever convinced 

 of the merits of the system I advocate, after hearing 



