52 
POTATOES AND FRUIT TREES. 
If I may judge his meaning of the expression “ old world fashion,” 
I must conclude that he means the antediluvians; and he fancies, 
my method of training fruit trees, but little removed from the prac¬ 
tice in those ancient times; but it is very doubtful, whether they 
even thought of walls for fruit trees in the antediluvian ages. The 
Journeyman Gardener, as he professes to be, must have very little 
skill in the powers of vegetation, if he is not capable of rearing a 
fruit tree from the seed in the spring of 1833, and by the end of 
1834, to have carried it considerably higher than a twelve feet wall, 
and securely budded at that height too, with any other kind of fruit 
of the same affinity, which may be agreeable to him. His form of 
training, Fig. 117, (which, by the bye, to keep his ellipsis up, leaves 
one-third of the wall bare,) is no other than the peacock-tail form, 
which, had he attended to before he had criticised upon my method, 
he would have found that I condemned; but I trust, ere he becomes 
a critic again, that he will pay a little more attention to the subject 
he means to subvert, or else he may find that he is meddling with 
an edged tool. He calls a tree figured p. 722, elliptical, whilst it has 
nothing of an ellipsis but its oval form; and if it is to retain such a 
form, I should wish to know how he means to furnish the top of his 
walls ; does he intend to adopt my method of pendant training, and 
to act so illiberal as not to inform us P I call all trees trained in such 
a form the peacock tail, as it is a very striking appellation to every 
one; and to know much of elliptical figures, requires some little skill 
in the mathematics, which, probably, the Journeyman Gardener may 
be better acquainted with than the training of trees. 
The method of training fruit trees which I pointed out, I have 
proved the beneficial effects of, many years ago ; by tbe result of 
practice, and not treacherous theory, I feel a real pleasure in being 
able to do any good I can for my fellow-creatures; and those who 
choose to adopt the methods of training which I have laid down, (1 
published them for the information of those who were desirous to be 
informed upon such matters, and not for the over wise,) in the London 
Hort. Trans. Vol. 4, page 246, and Vol. 5, page 44; also at pages 
449, and at page 482 to page 486 in your Register, will find good 
reason to applaud rather than condemn them. 
If it should please God to spare me, and I remain a few years at 
Welbeck, ere long I hope to prove to the Journeyman Gardener that 
I can produce plenty of fine fruit upon trees that have lived more 
than thirty years barren; and by the methods only which he judges 
too antiquated for this refined age. 
Nature points out for us, if we will attend to her, those forms that 
