TRAINING TREES FOR FANCY FRUITS.
Good fruit is more abundant and cheaper in the United States than anywhere in Europe. When sun-ripened and picked at the right time, it is all that fruit should be. Unfortunately, it is not usually brought into our markets in that condition.
The Paris restaurants have a way of adorning their entrance with a stand covered with various kinds of properly ripened fruit, the fragrance of which serves as an appetizer preceding the hors d'œuvre or the soup. They are extra choice fruits, and expensive, but in the markets one can buy the same very much more reasonably.
In the raising of fruit the French rely less on climate than on their own skill and care. The best peaches eaten in Paris do not come from the Sunny South, but from the neighborhood of the city, where they are grown against walls, and carefully cultivated and protected. When visiting France at the request of the London "Times" to study the methods which have made fruit in that country so good, Mr. W. Robinson found it a common thing to see a professor of fruit-culture and his class assembled round a tree, pruning it and discussing every operation as it goes on.
The pupils have much to learn, for the French do not simply cultivate trees in orchards as we do, but subject them to much trimming and bending of the branches so as to secure the best distribution of the sap and the greatest amount of sunlight and warmth.
The Japanese have taught us how to prune a chrysanthemum plant so as to make it produce giant blossoms. Our florists make use of the same method to concentrate the sap and vigor of a root and stem in a single perfect American Beauty rose. It is not size alone that is aimed at. Sometimes the result of such a method is a thing like the Belle Angevine pear which, though flavorless, may fetch a guinea in London because of its size and beauty. As a rule, however, Flavor is carefully safe-guarded. The leaves are kept trimmed so as to enable the sun to do its best in developing an aroma.
Outside of France the finest collection of espalier fruit trees I have seen is on Paderewski's estate, at Morges, on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva. It is surprising what a variety of forms the trees can be made to assume, as the fancy of the cultivator decides.