110 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ August 7, 1SS0. 
Oak trees were in many parts of the country completely divested of 
their foliage by caterpillars, and some few died from the effects, 
but I never heard that any landed proprietors gave up the idea of 
planting Oaks in consequence, and the old Oaks to-day look as 
luxuriant as ever they did before their trial. The Potato disease 
has not yet frightened our brothers in the Green Isle from culti¬ 
vating that most useful tuber, nor are we going to turn our backs 
upon fruit culture because of a few difficulties. It is not my 
business to speak to you upon the caterpillar pest, but if it were I 
should advise those of you who have large orchards, and especially 
those whose trees are large standards, to pursue a policy of masterly 
inactivity, and instead of purchasing Paris green, London purple, 
force-pumps, and other remedies, to keep your money in your 
pockets, protect the birds, manure the trees, and leave the issue 
with Nature. 
It is not my purpose to take you through the dim vistas of the 
past, or to drag in any ancient history of the Apple, but before I 
can speak directly to my subject I feel it is necessary to say a word 
or two upon the style of planting to be adopted for profitable 
Apple culture in the midlands. There are, as you are fully aware, 
those who decry the system of planting standard Apples, and who 
extol the planting of bushes and pyramids, and others who just 
reverse things, and say Plant all standards, bushes are only fit for 
gardens, and they yield no profit. But is it not the truth to be 
found between the two rather than with either ? 
For those who live in districts where labour is abundant, for 
those who intend to give their own laoour and attention to their 
plots of land, I believe there is no system to be compared with 
that of planting bushes or pyramids, and of tilling and cropping the 
land between with small fruits and vegetables. By this mode of 
culture we obtain a speedy return for capital invested, and above 
all we may by care and attention produce fruit of such size and 
quality that it shall command a ready sale at a good price, no 
matter what is the state of the market. My friend Mr. John 
Wright has so clearly set forth this system in his admirable little 
book, “ Profitable Fruit Growing,” that it will scarcely need doing 
again in our generation, and I shall say no more about it. On the 
other hand, much as I admire what our French neighbours call 
2 )etite culture, I am fully persuaded both by reason and experience 
that those of us who live in districts where neither women nor 
children will work out of doors need not attempt it. Raspberries 
and Strawberries are paying crops where you have suitable labour, 
and superintend the work of gathering the fruit yourself, but just 
try the experiment of putting men at 3s. a day to the work, and 
where will the profits go ? There will always be a large number 
of planters who will prefer standard trees, some market growers 
who will cultivate by horse power the land between the trees, 
using it for vegetable or for grain, and others who will plant 
orchards upon grass land, or lay the land down to grass after the 
trees are planted. To this latter class belong most of our agricul¬ 
tural friends, who wish to increase their home supply of Apples or 
to grow them for the market. Into the question of cultivated 
versus grass orchards I fear I may not venture further than to say 
this one word. Whatever merits cultivation may have when properly 
carried out, it has none when only half done and the land allowed to 
become covered with couch grass and weeds of every description. 
I would, therefore, advise farmers and landowners whose men are 
fully occupied during the summer with haymaking, root-cleaning, 
and harvest work, to shun cultivated orchards, and plant them in 
the old fashioned way upon grass, but give them a better system of 
treatment afterwards than has hitherto been the rule. My reason 
for introducing the question of standard versus pyramid trees is 
this. Having the fortune, or misfortune, to grow trees for sale as 
well as for fruit, I find the utmost difficulty to make people believe 
that the same varieties of Apples will not always succeed equally 
well in both forms. People see a bush in someone’s garden bearing 
a profusion of fruit, and if they are about to plant an orchard 
fchey go to a nurseryman and ask for so many standard trees of 
that variety. It may be that although suitable for a pyramid 
worked on a Paradise stock, it is from its habit of growth quite 
unsuited for a standard tree. Let us take, as an instance, an 
Apple well known in this locality, the Court Pendu Plat, called in 
my neighbourhood Wollaton Pippin. There are few, if any 
Apples, which bear better in the form of a pyramid, and as 
the blossom expands later than that of any other variety, it escapes 
frost, and the tree is consequently not only an abundant but also a 
regular cropper ; the effect is that but little wood is produced, and 
the tree is all fruit spurs. To plant such a variety in the form of 
a standard is a waste of land, as the tree can never occupy anything 
like the amount of space usually allotted in an orchard, and in most 
soils this kind is, as a standard, very short lived ; even where it 
keeps alive it makes but little growth. We have trees in our 
orchards thirty or forty years old, the heads of which are not 
larger than a good sized Black Currant bush, and the growth of 
which is so stunted and gnarled as to prevent the free flow of sap to 
the extremities, so that even when they bear fruit it is, from lack 
of proper nourishment, but small and worthless. I could name 
many other kinds, amongst which occur to me Potts’ Seedling,. 
Crystal Palace, Fearn’s Pippin, or Clifton Nonsuch, Stirling Castle r 
and others. Again, there are varieties which are unsuited for 
standard culture because of the size of the fruit and its liability to 
be blown off by early autumn gales. We sell every year great 
numbers of Lord Suffield in the form of standards, but my experi¬ 
ence would not lead me to plant it in that form. In making this- 
remark I am not in the least afraid of injuring the sale of these- 
trees ; we grow them because the public will have them, and it 
takes a good deal of preaching both in public and in private to- 
divert the stream of public opinion. For two generations we have 
inveighed against the Blenheim Orange as a standard, and to-day it 
is perhaps more popular than ever with small growers. Market 
men do not, it is true, plant it as they did, but as many trees are sold 
to-day as of almost any other variety. I take it that it is the 
especial province of the Association in whose name I speak to-day 
to combat all error, to make black marks against that which is bad, 
and to call attention to that which is good. The attendances. at 
our conferences show that there is a new life and a spirit 
of inquiry abroad respecting these matters, and we may con¬ 
fidently hope that in the future knowledge will be more 
quickly disseminated and more quickly acted upon than in 
the past. It took thirty years to introduce Cox’s Orange Pippin to 
the British public, and so loth was that respectable body to make a 
trial of anything new, that I have seen hundreds, and I think I 
may say thousands, of beautiful bushes of Cox’s Orange stand year 
after year on the quarters until they ultimately reahed their final 
repose on the fire. 
I trust I have not wearied you with this rather long introduc¬ 
tion, but I must confess I find the subject rather difficult of treat¬ 
ment. A bald list of names is rather tame reading, and, on the 
other hand, if one gives the rein to one’s thoughts on so interesting 
a question, it is hard to say when or where to stop. Again, when 
I come to make my list I am confronted by another difficulty- 
Mr. Wright says there are 1400 varieties of Apples. It is com¬ 
paratively easy to name fifty or sixty from them as being good, for 
that would be simply to transfer from a catalogue the list of kinds 
which, after three generations of trials and experience, we have 
selected for cultivation, but when we speak of Apples for profit 
we must still further reduce the list. I am thankful to say I have- 
not had practical experience of anything like 1400 kinds, and I 
shall not trouble you with anything outside of those varieties which 
have been practically grown and fruited with us. These number- 
about 200 kinds, most of which are at present in cultivation 
although some few have passed into oblivion, and more might do so 
with advantage. 
My selection for standards will be the following :—1, Duchess- 
of Oldenburg or Russian ; 2, Warner’s King ; 3, New Northern 
Greening ; 4, Bramley’s Seedling ; 5, Beauty of Kent ; 6, Pike’s- 
Pearmain, or King of Pippins ; 7, Improved Keswick ; 8, Ecklin- 
ville ; 9, Newton Wonder. There are other varieties with strong 
claims, whose voices seem to ask “ Why am I left out ?” but for pro¬ 
fitable culture the number is probably sufficient. For general utility 
and for a succession of fruit I should if reduced to a very small 
number take the first three. 
It will, I know, surprise my friends from the south to find 
Duchess of Oldenburg included at all in my list, still more that she- 
should be placed amongst the first three. I have, however, long 
been of the opinion that if, as Dean Hole said of Roses, he lived in a. 
pike (or toll bar), and had only one Rose it should be Gloire de 
Dijon, so I, under the same circumstances, would choose the 
Duchess as my sole Apple. With us in the midlands it is a heavy 
and regular cropper, and its size, colour and appearance always, 
command for it a ready sale. Ripening in September it is ready 
for market before the foreign supply is in, and if desired it can 
at the expense of size be pulled before it is ripe, and finished off 
in the baskets. The large fruit are quite unequalled for making 
Apple jelly, and the small fruit may with a fairly clear conscience 
be sold as table fruit. Is there any Rose without a thorn ? Let 
it be whispered that her grace is a true aristocrat, being possessed 
of a skin so tender that every finger mark shows in a very short 
time after pulling ; but if left in quiet repose for two or three 
days these marks will disappear. 
Warner's King is a first-rate culinary Apple ; the tree is a free 
and vigorous grower, a good bearer, and although the fruit attains 
an enormous size it is not a bad one for blowing off ; probably this 
may be accounted for by the fact that its footstalk is short and 
deeply inserted, so that the fruit rides on the branch. 
New Northern Greening is so called to distinguish it from the 
old variety, which is so well known, and from which it is probably 
a seedling ; it is, however, no novelty, as we have grown and fruited 
