420 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION.— September 9, 1650. 
The culture of hardy fruit-trees and hardy fruit-bearing 
shrubs is a subject of such importance, that any system of 
management calculated to render the supply of fruit less 
precarious than it has hitherto been will be hailed with 
pleasure. 
Almost every locality has its prevailing winds, and as “ the 
wind bloweth where it listetli,” it is no easy matter to keep 
tender blossoms from being damaged by such a variable 
current. 
In the beautiful arrangements of nature, the blossom is 
wrapped up for months in a scaly bud, hard and dry, allow¬ 
ing the cultivator every facility once a year to dispose of it 
in any form most suitable to his interest. 
In cultivating the Teach, for example, the tree is care¬ 
fully pruned and trained to a garden-wall, and other less 
important fruit-hearing plants are either trained to espalier 
rails, or grown as standards. Still there are attentions paid 
to all of them in the way of pruning, &c., so that the fruit- 
buds may he advantageously placed as regards regularity 
and shelter. 
Many Pear-trees are naturally tall-growing, and pyramidal 
in shape; such, by different manipulations, are artfully 
dwarfed and trained into more flat-headed forms, so as to 
get the blossom-buds, and eventually the fruit, as much as 
possible under shelter. Were this not done, their profitable 
cultivation would be impracticable. 
The action of the stormy blast or of the sea breeze upon 
ligneous plants induces a stunted growth and fruitless spray 
upon the windward side, whereas the lee side produces 
healthy shoots and blossoms. In the case of evergreens 
this is particularly remarkable, and not only does one plant 
shelter another, but one half of the same plant is thus used 
by nature to shel er the other half. Now, if our principal 
hardy fruits were produced upon evergreen trees or shrubs, 
the tender blossoms would have a mantle 
of mature leaves to protect them, but 
unfortunately for us they “ come forth 
like the silvery Almond - flower, that 
blooms on a leafless bough." 
Such being the case, all sorts of appli¬ 
ances are pressed into the service of 
horticulture in spring to protect the 
infant fruits — such as glass shades, 
bunting shades, worsted net, old fishing- 
net, straw ropes, spruce fir - branches, 
and the like. The Lancashire Goose¬ 
berry-fancier has been known to share 
even his bed-clothes with the Goose¬ 
berry-bush on a frosty night, rather than 
permit his “ Roaring Lion ” to suffer. 
In nurseries the compartments are 
chequered with, evergreen hedges, or, 
failing that, with Beech, whose leaves 
remain on the plant so long as to have- 
earned for this tree the adage “ that it 
keeps its old coat until it sees how the 
new one suits.” 
The growers of those splendid speci¬ 
mens of Cape Heaths, <fcc., which we see 
at exhibitions, use a tent of bunting to 
lessen the sun’s glare and the force of 
storms, in order to preserve the blos¬ 
soms and the foliage in the finest pos¬ 
sible condition. 
The normal form of a standard fruit- 
tree is either globular or mushroom¬ 
shaped, and therefore it faces every point 
of the compass, and bears fruit all over 
it, having an aspect East, West, North, 
and South. Now, although one tree in¬ 
jures another by its shade and other 
robberies, still it is clear that the in¬ 
dividual tree benefits as much by its 
foliage on the shady or northern side 
as it does by that on its sunny or 
southern exposure, and in practice we 
find the foliage of fruit-trees, and that 
of many flowering plants, as Camellias, 
for instance, on a north wall unusually 
fine. 
The distance of one fruit-tree from 
another on an ordinary garden wall I 
may take to he fifteen feet. I ’have, 
therefore, made the circumference of the 
fruit cylinders here introduced fifteen 
feet, and the height five feet. 
The ease with which all tangents may 
he made to run into the circumferential 
line peculiarly adapts the circular form 
to this sort of work, and the ease, too, 
with which a shoot fruitful at the extre¬ 
mities may be made to return upon the 
barren end of itself, and thereby clothe 
the hole, is no small recommendation 
ON FRUIT CYLINDERS. 
By A. Forsyth, C.M.H.S., St. Alary’s Church, Torquay. 
