220 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



interest, mainly from the fact that they differ in some measure 

 from the usually accepted methods. I will therefore break off 

 here, and say a few words about the habits of certain varieties 

 and on general management. Plums are, as a rule, very prolific, 

 and the heaviest cropping varieties have the habit of carrying 

 enormous crops every alternate year, thus causing an over- 

 abundant supply one season and a dearth the next ; fortunately 

 this does not always occur over the whole country at the same 

 time, or the result would be serious, still this habit has to a 

 certain extent deterred market-growers from planting this fruit 

 as extensively as they otherwise would have done. It is generally 

 said that spring frost is the cause of these frequent failures, but 

 it is undoubtedly often the result of over-exhaustion from the 

 excessive crop carried the previous year ; and when by any 

 natural cause the crop is reduced by one half, the trees will 

 carry fruit the succeeding year without taking a season's rest. 

 Many people are fully aware of this fact, and yet but few, com- 

 paratively, make any use of their knowledge. A market-grower 

 in my neighbourhood told me some time ago that for many 

 years he had thinned all the fruit on his plum trees, and that he 

 never did anything which paid him so well. He commenced one 

 season when the trees were so laden that the branches resembled 

 ropes of onions, and removed more than half the fruit just before 

 the stones began to harden ; this green fruit he took to market, 

 and it was eagerly bought up for cooking and preserving ; the 

 money he realised well repaid his labour. Then when the fruit 

 was ripe, and the market was " glutted" with undersized, ill- 

 coloured fruit, the hucksters actually quarrelled to obtain his fine 

 well-coloured fruit, and pulled his baskets out of the carts before 

 he could unload — this bears out my statement that there is 

 always a market for good fruit. Furthermore he said that the 

 following year his neighbours just over the hedge had their ill- 

 developed and half-starved bloom destroyed by frost, whilst his 

 came through the ordeal in safety, and he had quite enough 

 left to give an excellent crop. I quote this to show what may 

 be done on a large scale, and of course such practice is even still 

 more applicable to private gardens ; no doubt very many 

 gardeners regularly thin their fruit in the manner indicated, but, 

 alas, one's observation compels one to say that many more never 

 attempt it. Before leaving the subject of market growers, and 



