THE PLUM. 



223 



it crops in the open, but I have known a very large tree in one 

 of our orchards for thirty years, and only once has it been my 

 pleasure to taste the fruit from it ; one year in the seventies it 

 was full, and I spent most of an afternoon in its shade ; my 

 foreman says it also bore a crop about the time I was in short 

 clothes, but with these two exceptions it has been resting, so 

 that one may expect it to attain a vigorous old age. 



In the craze which has prevailed of late years for everything 

 large in the way of fruit, some of the smaller varieties have been 

 somewhat overlooked. I think of this class St. Etienne, Queen 

 of Mirabelles, and Wine Sour, are well worthy of notice. The 

 two former are pretty little yellow plums ripening in July and 

 early August, very acceptable for dessert, and most delicious as 

 bottled fruit. Wine Sour, as all connoisseurs know, is without a 

 rival for preserving. 



The plums I have hitherto named all succeed as standards 

 in the open, although many of them are well worthy of a 

 position on a wall, but those usually selected for walls are as 

 follows : Coe's Golden Drop, which is perhaps our best plum for 

 this mode of culture, closely followed in point of merit by Den- 

 nisfcon's Superb, Kirke's, and Jefferson, all of which are of the 

 highest quality and heavy bearers ; Early Transparent Gage is 

 also most fertile and of good flavour ; Green Gage, Bryanston, 

 Reine Claude de Bavay, and Reine Claude Violette, are all excel- 

 lent, but not quite such sure croppers ; the foregoing are all 

 worthy of a south or south-west wall. 



I would say here that it seems to me incomprehensible that 

 planters should persist in planting such plums as Victoria on a 

 south wall, where they are quite out of place and the fruit they 

 produce is so " mealy" as to be almost uneatable, and yet one 

 sees hundreds of them in this position ; on a north or east wall 

 they do well. Space forbids my giving lists for each aspect, nor 

 can I mention more varieties ; I might easily extend the list, but 

 have confined my remarks to the cream of those kinds grown in 

 the Midlands. I must, however, say a word about a plum which 

 has, at a somewhat recent date, been honoured by an award from 

 this Society ; I refer to Early Favourite. This variety has been 

 before the public for nearly forty years, and has been discarded 

 by nearly every cultivator on account of its extreme shyness ; I 

 think, therefore, a note of caution is not out of place. 



