Fruit-groiving in Kent. 
97 
county where the soil and climate are suitable, the production 
of fruit is very great and the quality is for the most part good. 
The area, however, of land that is specially adapted to the suc- 
cessful growth of fruit is limited and confined, as has been shown, 
to a few districts sharply defined by peculiar geological features. 
Situation, or the " lay of the land " as it is called by the natives, 
h is also its influence in deciding whether land is fruit-land 
proper, just as in hop-growing certain aspects and position are 
essential, cceteris paribus, to constitute really first-rate, " lucky" 
hop-land. 
Though a certain amount of improvement has taken place in 
the methods of fruit-culture, there is much still to be done as 
regards the methods of planting, the actual cultivation, and the 
pruning of the trees. The delicate and important operation of 
pruning, which makes all the difference between high and low 
production, is, it must be confessed, but imperfectly understood by 
Kentish fruit-growers, and their tree-cutters or pruners. Instead 
of the careful selection of the wood most likely to bear fruit, — in 
place of a raison d'etre applied to every stroke of the knife, — the 
typical tree-cutter hacks and slashes away ruthlessly, aiming 
principally at obtaining a symmetrical cup-shaped form rather 
than at retaining the wood most likely to bear fruit. He is 
paid by the tree, and cannot afford pauses for reflection as to 
individual shoots or buds, like the careful interested pruners in 
France and Belgium, or like some of the best English gardeners. 
He and his employers have certain rough-and-ready formulas 
which guide the knife, as for example, " Black currants bear on 
this year's wood, therefore all old wood should be cut away ; " 
and the general idea pervading the mind of the pruner is that 
he cannot cut black currant bushes too hard. In the case of 
other bushes — red currants for instance — the fruit is for the 
most part developed on the old wood, therefore all young shoots 
are religiously excised. There is this to be said, that where a 
grower has forty or fifty acres of fruit, it would be practically 
impossible to give each tree, each shoot, each bud the individual 
attention that is given to the cordon-trained trees of Mid-Central 
France. With regard to apple-trees, their pruning is performed 
in the most desultory manner. In many cases they have not 
been pruned for generations and are overgrown with unproduc- 
tive branches. Now and then it happens in some orchards 
— to use the graphic words of a correspondent — " that an 
ordinary workman is sent in with a saw to cut the apple-trees, 
and is expected to earn more than his money in faggots." It was 
formerly the prevalent notion, still holding to some extent, that 
fruit trees require but little manure. Apple and cherry orchard- 
lands were mown or fed off with lean sheep year after year, with 
VOL. XIII. — S. S. H 
