624 



NOTES OF A HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



herein is an instructive lesson. While continually talk- 

 ing of the fine climate of France, we have been going on for 

 years taking little interest in wall Pear culture, but planting 

 pyramids everywhere, and thus we have practically come 

 to be without a stock of the finer winter Pears, and com- 

 pelled to import enormous quantities of them from France 

 at high prices. 



Here I found a most experienced fruit-grower — one 

 who has also lived in good fruit-growing establishments in 

 England — who said emphatically that it is absolutely useless 

 to attempt the culture of the finer winter Pears, the most 

 valuable of all, away from walls, and that it is neces- 

 sary to place such kinds as the Easter Beurre against 

 well-coped walls with a southern exposure, the soil being 

 of the finest description and the climate that of Paris. Of 

 course he could grow some of them in the open, but 

 then they would be uncertain and worthless ; and he gives 

 an instance — Beurre Ranee, which is first-rate against 

 walls. The collection of winter Pears had only been planted 

 a short time, and yet the crop was very good, every 

 young tree bearing as much as one could desire to see 

 upon it. It is finally intended that these Pear trees shall 

 assume the form known as the Palmette Verrier ; but at 

 present the branches are trained diagonally — another in- 

 stance of the excellent practice of allowing branches that 

 are finally to assume the horizontal position to grow first 

 in an ascending direction, so that they may be furnished 

 and formed with less trouble and in a shorter time, the sap 

 rising much more freely and naturally in young branches 

 that ascend obliquely than when they run in an exactly 

 horizontal direction. When the outer ones are long and 

 old enough to form the bend, and have their points directed 

 towards the top of the wall, then the current of sap is 

 drawn through as well as could be desired. Beurre Diel 

 is also planted against walls here — not that it may not be 

 grown in the open air, but its flowers are very liable to 

 be injured by frost in spring, and therefore it is placed on 

 a wall to secure a crop. 



The mode of fixing the horizontal cordon here is the 



