370 SHORT PINCHING SYSTEM APPLIED TO THE PEACH. 



Fig. 169. 



digious. As tlie Frencli fruit growers say — the cultivator 

 who pursues this method had better provide himself with 

 chairS; and place one before each tree to accommodate the 

 person who has to see that the pinching is done at the 

 proper time ! The report of the commission sent to examine 

 this method is as unfavourable to it as anything can be. I 

 translated it with a view of giving it here^ but space pre- 

 vents my doing so, and therefore I sum up its statements 

 in a few words. " This system, which is an attempt to do 

 away wdth nailing in of the shoots, presents on the whole 

 no advantages over the one in common use, but, on the 

 contrary, certain drawbacks. Having read so much about 



the doings of M. Grin, I was asto- 

 nished at the very ordinary aspect 

 of his trees, and the by no means 

 remarkable result attained. The 

 individual who pays his penny to 

 see the "^blue horse captured in 

 the Black Sea by Captain Jones of 

 the ship Adventurer — the most ex- 

 traordinary monster ever seen/'' 

 &c., in the New Cut, and finds the 

 blue horse to be a puny young 

 seal, could not have been more 

 disappointed than was I at the as- 

 pect of the trees in this garden. 

 For when one reads of a method as 

 being about to supplant everything 

 else, it is quite natural to expect 

 that it must at all events possess 

 some merits over the older one ; 

 but in this instance such is not the 

 case. Of course I speak of this 

 mode of pinching as a system. 



It has one merit, however, and 

 may be used incidentally with any 

 system of summer-pruning. It 

 should be remarked that M. Grin 

 commenced by simply adopting a method of very short pinch- 



Peach Shoot of the current year 

 bearing a number of secon- 

 dary shoots — bourgeons an- 

 ticipes. 



