370 SHORT PINCHING SYSTEM APPLIED TO THE PEACH. 



Fig. 169. 



digious. As tlie Prencli fruit growers say — tlie cultivator 

 wlip 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 with 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 J ones of 

 the ship Adventure?' — 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 



bearing a number of secon- may be uscd incidentally with any 

 darv shoots — bourgeons an- , n • -r, 



ticipts. system oi 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 



