November 23, 1895. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
193 
Molyneux, may well be grown, as they will furnish 
all the diversity of colour required and they are all 
show blooms of first-class order. 
» > •- - 
PEARS. 
The following remarks may be of interest to your 
readers as to the treatment of Pear trees. I have 
for more than thirty years taken great trouble and 
delight as to their growth and cultivation. But in 
the first place I will give you sundry weights of 
some I have gathered this year. Off a tree of 
Souvenir du Congres, ten years old, about four 
dozen were picked, many weighing from i lb. to 
iJibs. each. Another tree of Conseillerde laCour, 
fourteen years old, yielded twelve dozen, all splendid 
fruits—at least a dozen weighed ever i lb. each. 
Then again, from Beurre Van Mons one bunch of 
four weighed 4 lbs. 13 oz., each fruit turning the scale 
at 1 lb. 13 oz. This tree was worked ten years ago 
with Chaumontel, of which we have picked over seven 
dozen of such fruits, that a Jersey friend of mine 
who had lately seen them said that they would do 
credit to that island. The reason I had this tree 
worked was that I considered it a coarse Pear, 
although it is full of juice, cooks well, and is a 
handsome dessert fruit. These four Pears grew on 
a shoot on the main stem (behind one of the grafts), 
and on which a bunch of six or seven flowers have 
come each year, from which four or five large fruits 
have generally matured. 
I could mention good yields from other trees, such 
as Winter Nelis, Beurre d'Aremberg, Bon Chretien, 
Thompson, a splendid Pear, and others : but, I must 
give you another example of how quickly and well a 
tree has grown and yielded fruit. Last spring two 
years ago—that is in 1893—I had some grafts sent me 
of Marie Louise d'Uckle” which we put on 
to a Marie L.ouise tree that had not done well. 
We cut off all the laterals, say eighteen, or nine on 
each side, grafting ten of the lower ones, and leaving 
the top ones to make fresh growth. All went well 
with both, and this year we have gathered over six 
dozen fine fruits from the grafts and four 
dozen of the original sort. The wall on each side 
of the stem is well covered with laterals of from 
five to six feet (no time lost here). But with regard 
to this new Pear I can only say that from this 
crop I consider it very inferior to Marie Louise. 
I will now proceed to state how my good gardener 
(who has been with me over thirty-two years) and I 
treat the trees. When I came here over twenty- 
eight years ago, some of the walls were covered 
with very old Pear trees that had been allowed tc 
grow wild, and only bore a few poor fruits at the 
extreme ends of the limbs. We at once cut these 
back to within six inches of the main stem, on which 
we grafted a few of the best sorts of Pears, and 
although the old wood was on an average at least 
two inches in diameter, and the grafts not larger 
than a goose quill, they took well, and made great 
growth, we think by the great flow of stronger sap from 
the old trees. The third year they bore good crops 
and have done so ever since ; but all the new wood 
was carefully attended to, by taking off all super¬ 
fluous shoots in June, nailing in, and cutting back 
that required ; and never letting any growth be more 
than a few inches from the wall. In cases where 
young trees were planted both on the walls, as 
espaliers, or pyramids the treatment has been the 
same—viz. spare the knife, spoil the tree. 
With our Apple trees we follow the same treat¬ 
ment, tying in the fruiting shoots to 6 in. of the 
laterals, and cutting off superfluous growth, and 
only have four or five laterals on each side, running 
from 10 ft. to 12 ft., planting the trees to within 
2 ft. of the paths. Little ground is lost by this plan, 
as on the best side crops can be planted to within 
18 in. of the tree, and will not suffer at all from the 
shade cast by the same, as the trees are never more 
than 4 ft. to 5 ft. high. I may say in conclusion that 
I consider twenty varieties of each kind of fruit 
sufficient for all purposes, but they should be good 
sorts. The soil here is light and naturally poor, 
but we never stint good feeding with well mixed 
rotten manure and leaf mould.— E. D. Sweet, 
Lymington, Hants. 
- «*. - 
The Mulberry tree is one of the latest fruit trees to 
come into bloom, but one of the earliest to ripen its 
fruit, and one of the most fruitful. 
CHRYSANTHEMUM MRS. FRANCIS 
FELL. 
Incurved varieties of Chrysanthemums are neither 
so numerous, or ever likely to be so, as the favourite 
Japanese types. Nevertheless a few good and 
beautiful new ones continue to brought forward not 
merely to swell the ranks of the old ones, but to 
displace the weaker and smaller ones from the show 
boards. There has been good evidence of this fact 
during the season now drawing to a close. New 
ones have played a prominent part. The variety 
under notice is quite new, and has not yet made its 
appearance on the show boards as far we have seen. 
The blooms are large, of good substance, and of a 
rich terra-cotta colour, with the reverse of the 
florets old gold. They are neatly incurved and 
characteristic of the section to which the variety 
belongs. Mr. T. S. Ware, Hale Farm Nurseries, 
Tottenham, has enabled us to give the accompany¬ 
ing illustration of it. 
FLOWERS AT MR. WILLIAM 
WHITELEY’S. 
The name of Whiteley has for so long been a house¬ 
hold word in all quarters of the globe that it has 
come to be very closely associated with thoroughness 
and completeness of arrangement with regard to 
detail in all business transactions. Since first the 
nursery department was started it has steadily grown 
in size and importance, until, after the recent 
augmentation by which the accommodation for pro¬ 
ducing cut flowers and plants in pots has been nearly 
doubled, it has reached colossal proportions. Visitors 
to the floral department of the huge establishment at 
Westbourne Grove, and Queen’s Road, Bayswater, 
have during the past week had a veritable feast of 
beauty spread out before their gaze, and many expres¬ 
sions of wonder and delight that fell from the lips of 
delighted spectators caught our ear as we were 
examining things for ourselves. 
A long, roomy corridor is exclusively devoted to 
the accommodation of superb specimens of Chrysan¬ 
themums in pots arranged in long undulating banks 
on either side of a central path. The Queen of 
Autumn is, without doubt, beautiful enough even 
amidst unfavourable surroundings, but becomes 
simply gorgeous when the extraneous attractions of 
artistic environment contribute their quota of beauty 
towards the general effect. This is the case at 
Whiteley’s ; for a great deal of taste has been exer¬ 
cised in the arrangement of the plants ; Crotons, 
Ericas, Palms and Ferns of various kinds have been 
freely utilised, whilst overhead long waving plumes 
of variously coloured grasses intermingle with the 
graceful drooping fronds of fine baskets full of the 
well-known Nephrolepis exaltata. A large mirror 
at the extreme end of the corridor opposite the 
entrance magnifies the view and enlarges this verit¬ 
able temple of Flora to a wondrous extent. 
Over a thousand plants are staged, comprising 
from a hundred and fifty to two hundred of the best 
market varieties, some grown as large specimens 
bearing one or two huge blooms fit for any show table 
in the kingdom, others diminutive little subjects in 
small forty-eight pots, each carrying five or six 
medium-sized blooms, and marvels of symmetry 
with regard to habit. Looking at the collection in 
the mass one cannot fail to be struck with the 
manifest predominance of yellows. Of these W. H. 
Lincoln has given the utmost satisfaction. Large 
blooms of it, almost globular in shape, testify to the 
fact that if required it can be obtained of exceedingly 
large size, while neat little batches of it in forty- 
eight pots are sufficient evidence that grown as a 
small bush plant [it has few other varieties to equal 
and certainly none to surpass it. Other sorts 
which have this season proved themselves successes 
upon numerous sbowboards were also prominent. Of 
these we noticed Chas. Davis, Lord Brooke, Stan- 
stead White, Viviand Morel, Col. W. B. Smith, 
Mdlle. Lacroix, Rose Wynne, Puritan, E. Molyneux, 
Niveus, Madame Marie Hoste, Florence Davis and 
Gloire du Rocher. 
All of these, together with others of which the 
pressure on our space forbids a detailed mention, 
were in grand condition and spoke in strong and un- 
mistakeable terms of the high qualities of the culture 
