.  September  23,  1897.  JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
283 
TRAINING  FRUIT  TREES— THE  JUMBLE 
SYSTEM. 
I  DID  not  head  my  letter,  on  page  235,  Decadence  in  Wall 
Tree  “’Culture;”  someone  else  has  done  so  in  the  rejoinders  on 
page  260.  I  will  therefore,  if  the  Editor  permit,  try  and  make  my 
point  clear,  as  above.  “  E.  D.  S.”  explains  it  very  explicitly  when 
he  says,  with  truth,  “The  crowding  of  branches,  large  and  small,  is 
a  too  common  source  of  failure  in  the  culture  of  wall  trees,”  going  on 
to  say,  “  If  branches  at  their  formation  were  disposed  more  thinly, 
the  management  subsequently  would  be  easier,  and  the  results  con¬ 
siderably  increased  ;  ”  or,  in  other  words,  the  better  and  more 
correctly  trees  are  trained,  the  less  time  they  require  in  management, 
and  the  better  the  returns  in  proportion  to  the  labour  expended  on 
them.  That  is  my  case  precisely,  and  “  E.  D.  S.”  is  exactly  right. 
He  seems  to  know  veiy  well  that  a  jumble  of  three  or  four  times 
more  branches  than  a  tree  ought  to  be  burdened  with  must,  of 
necessity,  take  more  time  in  keeping  in  order  than  a  tree  with  so 
many  less  to  be  pruned  and  secured  to  the  wall  and  kept  clean. 
I  have  not  seen  a  man  yet,  and  I  have  shared  fruit  tree  work  with 
a  few  scores,  who  has  Veen  able  to  train  and  attend  to  three  or  four 
branches,  and  to  complete  the  work  in  the  same  time  as  he  would 
finish  one;  and  if  it  should  be  my  fortune  to  discover  such  a  prodigy, 
L  shall  not  have  lived  an<l  loved  gardening,  and  wiitten  in  vain. 
Thank  you,  “  E.  D.  S.”  I  think  you  must  be  older  than  your 
frisky  co-responder,  who,  after  a  peculiar  dance  in  dialectics,  strikes  a 
(borrowed)  dramatic  attitude,  and  tells  us  with  a  whoop  he  is  “  off.” 
Is  he  ?  Well,  the  old  “  gardener-hunter  ”  is  after  him,  intends 
catching  him  up,  and  making  him  face  the  “  music.” 
And  so  “  H.  D.”  is  really  “  young.”  He  tells  us  so  in  the  sixth 
paragraph  of  his  declaration,  as  may  be  seen  by  all  who  care  to  turn  to 
it  on  page  261 — young,  but  “  not  vain.”  Oh,  no;  his  youth  forbids 
— or  he  might  be.  So  youth  is  his  salvation.  Only  “  a  few  years 
ago,”  as  he  let  us  know  in  the  historical  p»aragraph,  he  “  was  in  button 
clothes.”  The  words  cited  are  his  own,  n  )t  mine ;  yet  this  young 
man  of  bright  promise— on  paper  has  had  more  experience  than  one 
whom  he  infers,  and  probably  with  accuracy,  is  much  older 
than  himself.  Surely  the  logic  is  rather  shaky,  but  it  is  only  an 
instalment. 
Listen.  This  valiant  young  knight  of  the  knife  and  the  pen  hastens 
to  say  in  his  second  paragra]>h  that  while  men  might  work  as  hard  in 
gardens  fifty  years  ago  as  they  do  now,  they  “  certainly  ” — mark  the 
word— did  not  work  more  hours.  Xow  to  be  “certun”  is  to  speak 
from  personal  knowledge;  and  having  in  view  the  confessions  he  has 
permitted  to  escape  him,  notwithstanding  those  “  grey  hairs,”  one  is 
again  tempted  to  wonder  how  old  he  is,  and  to  marvel  at  his  memory 
of  what  he  saw  in  1817  ;  and  even  further  still  to  wonder  if  he  had 
seen  a  tree  or  a  man  at  work  at  all  at  that  time.  Yet  how 
“  certain  ”  he  is  about  the  hours  of  working. 
It  is  a  fact  that  his  antiquated  and  inexperienced  senior  was 
training  trees  under  the  old  masters  within  ten  years  of  the  accession 
of  the  Queen,  and  has,  consequently,  passed  his  jubilee  as  a  worker — 
training  them  as  a  training  for  himself,  and  rejoicing  in  it  till  the 
creeping  on  of  twiliglit  in  the  dog  days;  training  them  when  the 
boundary  walls  of  the  home  enclosui-es  were  the  pride  of  their  owner, 
his  gardener,  and  vi-itors.  Why  ?  Because  of  their  complete  cover¬ 
ing  in  every  part  from  the  ground  upwards  with  properly  spaced 
branches  laden  from  base  to  extremity  with  handsome  and  much 
cherished  fruit. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  young  gardeners  in  those  far  past  days  were  as 
ready  to  attend  to  wall  trees,  early  and  late  when  it  was  necessary  to  do 
so,  as  they  are  now  to  work  overtime  in  thinning  Grapes.  They  took 
pride  in  the  trees  then,  and  were  as  happy  in  working  on  them  as 
“  11.  D.”  was  when  “handling  the  scissors”  at  four  o’clock  in  the 
morning.  Tnis  pride  in  outdoor  work  which  then  prevailed  has  largely 
vanished.  It  commenced  waning  about  thirty-five  years  ago,  when  the 
men  began  to  be  surfeited  with  overtime  during  the  bedding  mania 
through  potting  scores  of  hours  by  candlelight  in  early  spring,  and 
then  in  watering,  pinching,  trimming  and  finnicking  over  llower  beds 
and  ribbon  borders  through  summer  evenings  till  the  time  for  taking 
cuttings  came  round  again.  There  is  not  much  wonder  that  they  had 
enough  overtime  to  more  than  satisfy  them.  It  is  this  lost  pride  in 
the  work  of  training,  pruning,  and  managing  wall  trees  that  told 
adversely  on  their  condition— not  at  once,  but  in  the  course  of  time  — 
until  in  innumerable  instances  the  right  word  for  inscribing  on 
numbers  of  garden  walls  was  Ichabod,  for  their  glory  had  departed. 
Talking  about  “  want  of  time”  for  attending  to  wall  trees,  through 
the  claims  of  “dinner  table  decorations,” as  accounting  for  the  deplorable 
condition  of  so  many  of  those  trees,  seems  almost  like  trifling  with  the 
subject,  though  ardent  young  men  may  be  firmly  convinced  that  such 
talk  represents  the  profoundest  reasoning.  It  is  a  mere  .skimming  of 
the  surface.  The  unfortunate  change  that  has  been  brought  about  is 
the  result  of  a  combination  of  influences  operating  in  various  ways  for 
more  than  a  generation. 
A  transfer  of  interest  from  one  subject  to  another  gradually,  but 
surely,  leads  to  a  loss  of  pride  and  a  weakening  of  zeal  in  respect  to  the 
subjects  left  behind  ;  and  this  depreciation  can  have  no  other  result 
than  a  loss  of  knoAvledge  of  a  particular  kind  for  a  particular  purpose. 
The  effect  of  this,  as  applied  to  the  training  and  culture  of  fruit  trees, 
Ituch  as  once  made  garden  walls  ornamental  and  profitable,  is  that  there 
have  been,  at  any  time  during  the  past  twenty  years  and  more, 
hundreds  of  young  gardeners  who  could  not  train  from  its  foundation 
and  build  up  a  really  good  wall  tree  to  save  their  lives. 
I  do  n  it  suggest  that  “  H,  D.”  belongs  to  that  category.  On  the 
contrary,!  am  inclined  to  think  he  knows  just  enough  to  know  better, 
and  hojie  it  is  so.  He  has  not  told  us  that  he  has  planted  trees, 
trained  them  from  the  beginning,  furnished  walls  with  them,  and 
kept  the  straight  thinly  disposed  branches  in  a  fruitful  state  through¬ 
out  their  entire  length  over  a  period  of  more  than  twenty  years.  If 
he  cannot  tell  us  he  has  done  this,  what  is  his  authority  for  attributing 
ignorance  to  those  who  have,  and  there  are  happily  several  such  still 
existing  ? 
True  he  has  told  us  that  the  “guiding  spirit”  of  this  Journal  has 
praised  some  splendid  trees  of  which  he  had  charge  for  “many  years.” 
AVill  he  t  11  us  what  he  means  by  “  many  ?  ”  He  ought  to  be  able  to 
do  that  without  difficulty,  and  until  he  does  nobody  will  know  how 
many  his  “  many  ”  counts.  Then  will  he  further  tell  us  whether  he 
planted  those  trees  and  trained  them  from  infancy  into  their  splendid 
conilition,  or  whether  someone  else  did  the  foundation  work  before  his 
time?  As  a  practical  man  he  will  recognise  the  pertinency  of  these 
questions. 
Then,  again,  when  the  “  spirit  ”  praised  those  trees,  did  he,  or  it, 
do  so  because  they  were  splendidly  trained,  but  bari’en,  and  such  as  a 
man  wasted  his  time  over ;  or  because  they  were  both  admirably 
trained  and  fruitful,  and  such  to  which  intelligent  labour  was  not 
misapplied?  If  they  were  “barren,”  why  cite  tbem  as  examples  of 
the  knowledge  and  skill  of  the  dresser?  If  “fruitful”  why  condemn 
splendidly  trained  trees  that  bear  crops  of  fruit  worthy  of  praise  ? 
Our  bright  young  star  may  choose  which  horn  of  the  dilemma  he 
prefers,  and  rest  on  it  as  comfortably  as  he  can;  he  cannot  sit  on  both, 
as  they  are  too  divergent,  and  if  he  attempted  he  might,  perhaps, 
experience  one  of  those  “nasty  falls”  which  he  seems  to  anticipate.^ 
As  “  11.  1).”  canters  away  he  leaves  a  few  other  footmarks  behind 
him,  but  they  mostly  lead  to  the  jungle,  where  the  lion  lurks.  Well 
trained  trees  only  last  a  few  years  ;  the  branches  die ;  they  only  bear 
at  the  tips.  Such  is  the  gist  of  his  dolorous  ditty,  and  he  almost 
glories  in  their  miserable  condition.  The  other  view  is  that  the  best 
trained  and  managed  trees,  like  the  best  trained  and  managed  Vines, 
are  just  those  which  remain  productive  the  longest,  and  cost  the  least 
in  labour.  The  reasoning  of  our  reformer  seems  very  much  on  the  par 
with  the  crooked  and  many  branches  he  loves.  He  seems  to  shudder 
at  a  straight  one  as  a  monstrosity,  and  appears  “gone”  on  “side 
shoots”  and  the  time-absorbing  “laying  in.” 
Did  he  ever  see  a  wall  of  cordon  Fears  with  the  (to  him)  horribly 
straight  stems  roped  with  fruit?  He  would,  of  course,  soon  alter  that 
by  laying  in  those  precious  side  shoots  between  them  ;  and  does  he 
know  that  a  really  well  trained  tree  is  composed  of  a  number  of  straight 
jiroperl}^  distanced  cordons  ?  Whether  he  knows  or  not,  he  would  not 
let  them  stand  in  beautiful  fruitful  isolation,  but  lace  in  the  ^  side 
shoots,  or  set  his  labourers  to  do  it,  and  call  it  “traiiring;”  it  is  in 
one  sense  worthy  of  the  name,  for  it  is  training  on  the  modern 
jumble  system.  On  such  preference,  all  I  Avill  say  more  to-night, 
as  the  hunters’  moon  is  getting  low,  and  the  midnight  chimes  are 
dying,  is  Chagun  a  son  gout. — Melton. 
HARMFUL  AND  HARMLESS  GARDEN  MOTHS.— 8. 
“  Do  not  forget  the  puss-moth,”  said  a  friend;  “feline  in  name  but 
not  feline  in  nature ;  a  cat  to  which  gardeners  have  not  the  diriike  they 
feel  towards  the  four- legged  one.”  Well,  the  puss-moth  doi^  occur 
about  gardens  sometimes  ;  I  have  seen  it  in  several  along  the  Thames 
and  New  River,  where  the  side  of  the  ground  next  the  stream^  is  edged 
by  Willows,  and  it  no  doubt  visits  other  gardens  near  which  grow 
these,  or  Poplars. 
Seldom  does  a  ])uss-moth  rest  on  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  like  many 
moths  will,  till  their  hour  of  flight  arrives.  Guided  by  the  mysterious 
force  we  call  instinct,  it  prefers  to  secrete  itself  amid  foliage,  the 
thicker  the  better,  as  offering  more  security  from  a  hungry  bird.  To 
some  of  us  older  entomologists  this  insect  is  associated  with  several 
metropolitan  cemeteries,  where  the  caterpillars  used  to  be  often  seen 
upon  the  Weeping  Willows  appropriate  to  such  places,  and,  since  the 
day's  of  Izaak  Walton,  or  before,  it  has  been  familiar  to  anglers,  owing 
to  its  occurrence  besides  rivers  or  brooks.  (I  am  not  aware,  however, 
that  any  angler  ever  tried  the  caterpillar  as  bait,  though  it  might 
tempt  a  voracious  fish.)  This  moth,  Avhich  comes  out  in  May  and 
June,  is  greyish,  with  yellow  wing-rays  and  numerous  dark  markings, 
the  body  w'hite,  having  on  it  black  spots  and  bars.  Nothing  about  it 
