Couteur, who has carefully figured and described them all. Many of them are known in England, and also cultivated in Guernsey; but others are quite peculiar to the islands. The reinettes (or rennets) are a large group, all good, and some very handsome. The pippins are still more numerous. Several varieties of pearmain, and a number of codlins are familiar names, and yield good fruit. The romeril is considered a good kind, but the coccagee carries off the palm for cider. Little cider, however, is now made, and the export, which was once an important article of trade, has fallen off considerably. In Guernsey, the cultivation of the apple has never attained the importance that it did in Jersey; but attention has been paid to it of late years, several of the fine American sorts having been introduced. To Mr. Nant, a nurseryman in Guernsey, the author is indebted for a very complete list of the kinds cultivated in that island. No less than sixty English varieties, and twenty-five French, are in this list; but the identification is not very complete, and the names used are often by no means correct. As many as fifty-four named sorts are known in Guernsey, as having been grown in the island, in the same family, for several generations. The names of the sorts in Jersey, Guernsey, France, and England, are so little alike that an enumeration could only lead to confusion. Although apples are cultivated extensively, the crop is by no means certain. A thick fog, or white frost, will sometimes not only destroy the hopes of a season, but check the fruiting of the trees for several years. Generally, good and bad years alternate, but as much as four successive large crops have been obtained. The value of the crop varies enormously, the fruit sometimes selling at seven shillings per quarter (about four cwt., or forty-two bushels of twenty-six gallons), the same quantity in other years being worth twenty-three shillings. Pears. Both Jersey and Guernsey are remarkably successful in, and have gained much reputation for, the culture of pears, whose export has long been a matter of considerable profit. As many as fifty-nine named varieties are cultivated in Jersey, some of which are very excellent, and a few of them keep well and range over many months for table use. Many bergamottes, doyennes, beurrés, and others known familiarly in England, are very successful; but the most remarkable in both islands is the chaumontel, which certainly attains there its greatest perfection, owing, no doubt, to the peculiarities of climate it enjoys, and the absence of night frosts when its final ripening approaches. Great attention also is paid to the culture. These pears are usually plucked on or about the 10th October, but are not fit for use for several weeks, being in perfection about Christmas. Those weighing sixteen ounces are regarded as first rate, and fetch good prices. Pears of this size average in value from four to five pounds sterling per hundred in the Guernsey or Jersey market; but as they diminish in size and weight, the value falls rapidly, the numerous small fruit being considered only fit for baking, although in point of flavour they are little inferior. Chaumontel pears of extraordinary size are sometimes obtained by removing most of the fruit from a tree. The largest and best grown fruit on record, was grown at Laporte in Guernsey, in the year 1849. It measured 6 inches in length, 14 inches in girth, and weighed thirty-eight ounces English weight. No chaumontel weighing more than thirty ounces, appears to have been produced in Jersey. As a group of pears from a single tree, there is perhaps no more remarkable instances recorded, than one occurring in the season of 1861, when of five fruit obtained from one tree, in the gardens of Mr. Marquand, of Bailiff's Cross, Guernsey, four of them weighed together seven and a-half pounds. It is worthy of remark, that in this case the tree, though usually prolific, bore only these five fruits. The pears in question, weighed respectively thirty-two and a half, thirty-three, thirty-one and a-half, and twenty-two ounces. Cordon Training of Fruit Trees. For the following description, the author is chiefly indebted to the Rev. T. Collings Bréhaut, the successful introducer of such important modifications of the cordon method, as to justify his being regarded as a second inventor. Mr. Bréhaut is himself the author of a most useful treatise on the subject, published in London in 1860. This method of training has been carried out so successfully in the gardens of Richmond House, Guernsey, that it deserves special notice as one of the curiosities of the island. The method may be described as follows:- Trees are planted against walls, either in the open air or in orchard houses, at intervals of thirty-six inches, and having three leaders each, which are laid in at an angle of 45°. The spurs, and successive growths on these spurs, are closely pinched-in during the summer, so as to leave little for the winter pruning. It has been observed by Dr. Lindley, that summer pruning has been too long neglected, and the result has been that fine crops of fruit have been annually gathered under this system. Early potatoes, planted in the borders of the orchard houses, were ready by March; and peaches by July, from the walls. As soon as six leaves were developed on any shoot they were pinched down to three; the succeeding growths were respectively pinched in to two and one leaves,—the whole resembling a thick cord of leaves, shoots and fruit, from which the name "cordon" is derived. This system is applicable to trees in pots, whose branches grow naturally at an angle of 45°, and to standard trees in the open air. For Chaumontel trees against walls it has no equal, and for peaches it is so successful, that in Mr. Bréhaut's orchard house, which is a lean-to, the produce is at the rate of three peaches per square foot for the back wall, and about as many fruit on the trees in pots. THE SHRUBBERY AND FLOWER GARDEN. It is not possible to exaggerate the rich luxuriance of vegetation in carefully-cultivated gardens, to be seen in sheltered localities in Guernsey. This is recognised not only in the great variety of foreign, and often tropical trees, that grow in the open air, but in their magnitude and the freedom of their growth; while the mixture of South African, Brazilian, Australian, New Zealand, and Norfolk Island forms of vegetation, with many North American, Chinese, and Japanese species, and the indigenous plants, give a singular and very beautiful result. To H. O. Carré, Esq., Lieutenant Bailiff of Guernsey, especial credit is due for the taste and intelligence he has displayed in cultivating foreign trees and shrubs. Mr. Carré has also supplied lists of great value, which are now submitted to the reader. List of trees and shrubs not indigenous, hardy in Guernsey but tender in England. EUPHORBIA mellifera. ss. gr. MANDEVILLEA suaveolens. MELIANTHUS major. METROSIDEROS, (3 or 4 species). ss. MITRARIA Coccinea. MYRSINE africana. MYRTUS communis. NERIUM oleander. ("). OLEA europæа. 88. 8. OZOTHAMNUS thyrsiflorus. s. gr. PINUS filifolia. |
