WINTER PRUNING EXPERIMENTS WITH APPLE TREES. 143 
2. Effect on Setting of Blossom. 
The counts of blossom buds have made it possible to get an idea of 
the proportion of the blossom which produces fruit, i.e. the "setting." 
This is most conveniently expressed by stating the number of mature 
fruits as a percentage of the blossom buds ; the actual percentage of 
blossom setting would be roughly obtained by dividing by five or six. 
Table II. gives these results in detail. 
Table II. — Number of Mature Fruits as a Percentage 
of Blossom Buds. 
1920. 
1921. 
Unpruned. 
Long- spur Pruned. 
Unpruned. 
Long- spur Pruned . 
No. of 
Percent- 
No. of 
Percent- 
No. of 
Percent- 
No. of 
Percent- 
Trees. 
age. 
Trees. 
age. 
Trees. 
age. 
Trees. 
age. 
Allington 
3 
IO 
8 
22 
5 
49 
8 
5° 
Beauty of Bath . 
3 
II 
8 
26 
5 
4 
8 
12 
Bismarck 
4 
23 
8 
47 
Cox's Orange 
4 
26 
8 
36 
Early Victoria 
(Crab) 
5 
74 
8 
139 
Gladstone (Crab) . 
4 
43 
8 
79 
Grenadier (Crab) . 
3 
14 
8 
42 
5 
44 
8 
5° 
James Grieve (Crab) 
4 
8 
8 
12 
Lane's P. Albert . 
3 
5 
8 
II 
5 
4 
8 
25 
Lord Derby 
6 
33 
8 
60 
Newton Wonder . 
3 
13 
8 
43 
5 
19 
8 
57 
Norfolk Beauty . 
4 
5 
7 
5 
Rival . 
4 
16 
8 
48 
Worcester Pear- 
main (Crab) 
3 
3 
8 
7 
5 
40 
8 
28 
Average per- 1 
centage . ) 
18 
9 
48 
25 
65 
28 
in 
46 
There is but one case — -that of ' Worcester ' in 1921 — -where the 
percentage for the unpruned trees is higher than that for the long- 
spur pruned trees ; in every other case it is lower, and in several 
cases less than half as much. The average of all varieties in 192 1 
shows the unpruned trees setting little more than half as large a 
proportion of their blossom as the long-spur pruned trees. 
Another method of estimating the proportion of the blossom 
which sets has in a few cases been attempted. It might obviously 
be expected that those trees which set the higher proportion of their 
blossom would show at picking time a larger proportion of their fruits 
in clusters of two or more (i.e. two or more fruits from one " truss " 
of blossom). This indication of setting is not, however, altogether 
satisfactory ; for fruits in a cluster, as is well known, tend to force 
each other off during their growth ; and since the fruits of the long- 
spur pruned trees are nearly always larger than those of the unpruned 
trees, the former will be likely to lose more from this cause. (It 
