EEPOET OF THE APPLE AND PEAR CONFERENCE. 



35 



me I will not flinch so much as to move my eyelids, so sm-e am 

 I that common sense will at last prevail, and that it will be 

 agreed all romid that Natm^e has something to do with the pro- 

 duction of fruit. 



I have the consolation, however, of knowing that common 

 sense has prevailed. The horticultural papers altered their tone 

 on the subject of pruning from that date ; practical gardeners 

 who lead by intelligence and example saw and acknowledged I was 

 right, and to their advantage they have used the knife less freely 

 than formerly. Moreover, since the year 1876 we have had a suc- 

 cession of Apple and Pear Conferences, and their collective lesson 

 appears to be Magna est Veritas et py-cevalebit, for have we not 

 entered on a new career in fruit culture, common sense guiding 

 the way, because only where common sense prevails does Nature 

 prove herself in every sense the friend of man. While we re- 

 pudiate reason, Nature destroys our false work, and does not even 

 stop there, for she destroys man himself, and history is in great 

 part the record of the price that man has paid for adherence to 

 unreason, superstition, and folly. 



Amongst the many persons who have carried out my proposals, 

 I will name Mr. James Hudson, the gardener at Gunnersbury 

 House, who is known to you, and whose work is near at hand. 

 He had long lamented the unfruitfulness of a collection of good 

 varieties of dessert pears, but he saw no way to improve them 

 but to continue the practice of pruning. He saw my sample 

 trees in 1876, and from that time he allowed the trees to manage 

 their own affairs, since which they have been constantly and 

 abundantly fruitful. Mr. J. James, then gardener at Eedlees, 

 took a similar course, and secured equally happy results. In 

 tliis garden of the Eoyal Horticultural Society you may see 

 collections of pyramid pears that have been systematically 

 summer pruned for any number of years, and have borne 

 moderate crops intermittently. But you may also see a collection 

 of apple trees in the form of free bushes that have only been 

 lightly winter-pruned to keep them somewhat in order, and they 

 have been constantly and abundantly fruitful, and, in fact, have 

 every year for several years past illustrated my idea of fruits dis- 

 played like ropes of onions. In the famous garden at Calcot, 

 near Reading, where the late Mr. Richard Webb had every year 

 finer crops of fruit than probably could be found in any garden 

 of similar extent in all the home counties, there was absolutely no 

 pruning practised ; the trees never made more than a moderate 

 growth, though in land of great strength, and the fruit was of 

 such quality that Mr. Webb took a high place in great exhibi- 

 tions as well as in Covent Garden Market. When lately at 

 Heckfield, Mr. Wildsmith pointed out some pear trees under 

 "reverse ' ' training that proved more than ordinarily fruitful. This 

 reverse training does not pay when it is carried out in a severe 



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