Fix the tree loosely to the wall, and water the roots through a rose.

The season I prefer for planting is autumn, say the beginning of November or end of October, when the leaves are dropping off the trees. Planting can, however, be performed, and often is successful, from October to April. In planting peach-houses, where healthy trees exist on the open walls, it is a good plan to lift some that are of considerable size, say planted five or six years, and transfer them to the peach-house. I have done this and got a good crop the same season. Every fibre should be carefully saved in the process. By this means a peach-house can be furnished with fruit without the loss of a season or a crop.

PRUNING AND TRAINING.

Many ways of training and pruning the peach and nectarine have been practised and recommended. French horticulturists especially have been very successful in training them in several ways characterised by regularity and neatness. The single cordon as well as the multiciple-cordon systems are favourite modes of training in France. Modifications partaking more or less of the French systems have been practised and recommended, especially by Seymour, in England. But the ordinary fan system of training is by far the most generally practised and liked. It is, especially under glass, the mode of training which the most successful forcers of the peach have adopted, and it is that which I recommend. Many grand old examples of peach-trees under glass are to be found in this country, which have all along been trained on the fan principle, and that are yet in fine bearing con

dition, being well furnished from top to bottom with young bearing wood. Taking a young tree, fig. 15, which I have recommended for planting as the foundation of a fan-trained tree, different cultivators who are most in favour of this system of training would deal differently with the ten young growths with which it is furnished. Some would cut them all back again to within five or six buds of their base; others would not shorten them at all, but would let them start into growth with as many young shoots as could be tied to the trellis without crowding them. What I have practised and would recommend is a mean between these two. The two centre shoots I would shorten back to half their length, the other eight shoots to be merely topped back to solid, well-ripened wood. The cutting somewhat closely back of the two centre ones makes it certain that two or three good strong growths will start from near their base to properly fill up the centre of the tree with leaders. Each of the other eight shoots should have all their buds removed by degrees, except one near the base, and one or two at equal distances between it and the leading bud, according to the length of the shoots. Two buds to the left on the under side-if the shoots are long enough to have room for three on the upper side, the buds on the one side to alternate in position with those on the other. These lateral growths, with the leader, are enough to lay a foundation to serve for the future full-grown tree. The lateral growths should be allowed to grow without being stopped. Should the leaders show signs of growing very vigorously at the expense of the side growths, stop them whenever they show such a tendency. This will cause them to make lateral growths freely, and equally balance the growth

of all the young shoots. This encouragement of lateral growths, especially on the young wood in the centre of the tree, gives sufficient to furnish the tree without having recourse to the undesirable practice of first allowing a few very strong leaders to monopolise the sap, and then to cut them down at the winter pruning. In this way much time is gained in covering a wall or trellis with bearing wood.

A young tree thus managed on what may be termed a mean between the extension and the cutting-hardback systems, produces a comparatively large wellfurnished tree the autumn after it is planted, and one which requires very little or no winter pruning before starting it into another year's growth. If the summer disbudding and pinching of the first season's growth have been properly attended to, the tree will be so thoroughly furnished with young wood that all the pruning that should be done is simply to remove any shoots that would crowd the tree. The distance between the shoots should not be less than 3 or 4 inches. In February 1878, I planted a number of young peaches and nectarines in an orchard-house. In the autumn not a single shoot was shortened back, and at the close of their second year's growth the trees thoroughly furnished in many instances spaces of 18 feet by 13 feet, and a great many of them 16 feet by 12 feet, besides bearing a good crop the season after being planted. There are some magnificent trees at Brayton Hall, which Mr Hammond, the able gardener there, managed on the extension system, and consequently filled their allotted spaces and bore grand crops in half the time in which this could have been done by the old cuttingback system.

After the trees have grown and covered the space allotted to each, the system of pruning must be directed so as to continually keep the whole tree regularly supplied with young fruit - bearing wood. With a view to this, of course the yearly removal of old wood in winter, and the laying in of a corresponding amount of young wood in summer, must be carefully attended to. Fig. 16 gives an idea of what I

mean by this, and will serve to illustrate the pruning out of old wood and laying in the new. The shoots represented by the solid lines are those which bore

fruit last summer, and those shown by the dotted lines, growing from the bases of the fruit-bearing wood, are those laid in in summer to bear the following season. In pruning such a tree, the last year's wood, shown by the solid lines, is cut off close to the young wood which is to supply the next year's crop.

Some make a practice of cutting back the young bearing wood to two-thirds its length. I do not advocate this indiscriminately. Where the shoots are long and not well ripened, and the buds consequently weak, they should be shortened back to where the wood is firm, and always to a strong wood - bud. Peach-trees in a healthy condition have their buds in clusters of three-a wood-bud in the centre, and a fruit-bud on each side of it; and to such a cluster of buds they should always be cut when cut at all.

Well-established trees that have borne heavy crops regularly, and especially those that have been forced early, generally make shorter and stronger growths, well studded with strong clusters of buds. In this case it is unadvisable to shorten them back at all. A watchful eye must always be kept on the lower portion of the tree, so that it is not allowed to get bare of young fruit-bearing growths. It need scarcely be said that, from the fact that it is the young wood that bears, the tendency is for it to be in greatest abundance at the top.

The best guarantee against trees becoming bare of young bearing wood at their lowest parts, is to annually cut back a few healthy young growths to 2 or 3 eyes, and allow as many of these to bud and grow as may be required to keep up the supply of young wood. This is an indispensable necessity, from the fact that portions of old wood have annually to be removed