THE CORDON SYSTEM OF GROWING PEARS AT HOLME LACY. 
95 
two or three trees which may have missed bearing. As to the superiority of the fruit in size, 
appearance, and flavour, over fruit grown in the same garden, on pyramids and espaliers, there can 
be no question. In hot summers it has been necessary to mulch and even to water the trees, for the 
quince stock roots nearer to the surface and has more small fibres than the pear stock. As to 
pruning I certainly think that summer pinching back cannot be carried out so successfully in our 
climate as it can in France. My late gardener (Mr. Wells) who planted the trees and managed them 
for some years writes as follows: “ My experience in pinching has never been what I was led to 
expect: never but in one solitary instance have I found the fruit bud to be the result of that practise, 
and that one was so far from home, so to speak, that it had to be cut off to keep the spur short. 
Nor was this all, for I have found that what was once a decided fruit bud, would lengthen and grow 
into wood before the growing season closed.” The result of summer pinching on the Cordon 
Wall has certainly been to produce too many wood shoots, which may have been caused by a richer 
soil or a more moist climate. 
Five summers have passed since this report was given; summers by no means favourable to 
the production of fine fruit; and yet the Cordon trees have far surpassed those trained as pyramids, 
bushes, espaliers, or on walls of various aspects : they have been more uniformly productive, and 
have produced fruit much finer in quality. The further experience moreover has caused the 
practice of summer pinching to be altogether abandoned. The fruit buds, not ripening so quickly 
as in a warmer climate, burst into wood shoots. The spurs are now shortened back twice 
during the summer and autumn, once after the Midsummer shoot and again in September. Under 
this treatment the trees are abundantly furnished with fruit buds. 
As a rule it is not advisable to depart from the single Cordon. In the garden of a friend, 
triple Cordons have failed to produce as fine fruit as that grown on the single Cordon ; this is attributed 
to an unequal distribution of sap. 
The Cordon Wall has thus far been a great success ; but with reference to the varieties of 
Pears that can be grown on it, there have been some failures. I was anxious to ascertain whether 
several sorts of Pears which are of excellent quality in France would ripen equally well in 
Herefordshire; but some of those planted have failed to do so. Suzette de Bavay y for example, 
though it bears excellent crops, does not mature its fruit, and with Madame Millet , Doyenni 
dAlen$on , and some others, which have also here proved inferior as dessert fruit, will have to be 
replaced. All the popular sorts succeed well; and some also that seem to have failed in other places. 
It has often been said, as for instance by a clever writer on Pears, in the “ Journal of Horticulture ” 
last autumn, that “ Doyenne Boussoch and Bcurve Bachelier are very large and handsome but utterly 
worthless.” From my Cordon Wall, both these kinds are excellent, though the Doyenne Boussoch has 
the fault of many of the early sorts of being liable to decay at the core, almost as soon as it is fit to 
eat. 
It would be difficult to give a list of Pears best adapted for growing on the Cordon Oblique 
System ; for not only do tastes differ, but differences of soil, of climate, and of situation account for 
some Pears being highly esteemed in one county and considered worthless in another. There is 
