« 
ON PEACH AND NECTARINE TREES. 675 
Now to this objection urged by Mr. Harrison against Mr. Sey¬ 
mour’s system, I must beg leave to tender my unqualified dissent, 
for the origin of each successive shoot, after the first season of train¬ 
ing in the lateral shoots, is most certainly not farther removed from 
the parent stem, which position is also admitted by Mr. Harrison in 
the very next sentence to that I have quoted.* But he states in addi¬ 
tion, “ that such shoot is uniformly much weaker, than one arising 
from last year’s wood.” That it is weaker, I most willingly admit, 
but in young trees (which I presume Mr. Harrison’s friends must 
have been) the failure of fruit most commonly results, from an over¬ 
luxuriance in the young wood, and this is an axiom which will be 
generally, if not universally allowed by practical gardeners, and such 
truism being admitted, it clearly establishes the fact that weakness 
(in this case at least) is strength, inasmuch as the production of fruit 
is the desideratum. With regard to “ the rugged protuberance simi¬ 
lar to the spur of a pear tree,” I beg to declare most unequivocally, 
that under Mr. Seymour's system, with pioper management and at¬ 
tention, no such unsightly appearances can exist or occur,f and if the 
statement of a youth be not sufficiently conclusive, I invite all unbe¬ 
lievers to a personal inspection, when I will engage to convince them, 
be they ever so obstinate, by actual demonstration. 
Mr. Harrison next observes “ that when a shoot [b. b.] (that is a 
lateral shoot) dies from casualities, a substitute cannot readily be ob¬ 
tained, and that he has seen three or four such shoots perish succes¬ 
sively on the same branch, and thus there was a yard or two of branch 
without a single lateral shoot upon it, and that instances of this kind 
are not solitary.” 
My experience has revealed to me nothing of the kind complained 
of, and although I have witnessed the system of Mr. Seymour in 
practical operation, on an extensive scale in several gardens, I have 
never yet met with one solitary instance of dead wood occurring in 
any material degree. I do, therefore, conclude that Mr. Harrison’s 
friend first attempted the adoption of a system, subsequently gave it 
up, and afterwards unjustly condemned it as worthless, never having 
comprehended its merits, its efficacy, or its beauty. 
* When the shoots has its rise from one of the previous years’ growth, it must 
of necessity (as we before stated in page 532,) be produced more distant from the 
origin of the lateral branch, than its parent. If the shoot is produced from the 
protuberance and not upon a last year’s shoot, we before remarked, it would not 
be liable to the objection.—J. H. 
f Mr. Seymour’s Trees have them.—J. H. 
4 f 3 
