purple. Juice purple, sweet, accompanied with a slight bitter but agreeable taste.

Ripe the beginning and middle of August.

This Cherry grows wild, and is cultivated also, in abundance, in several parts of England, particularly in the Chiltern part of Buckinghamshire; in Cheshire, and about Polstead in Suffolk, where the fruit is called Merries, from the French Merise. In the season they are to be found in almost every principal market town in England, where they always find a ready sale. It is the principal fruit employed for the making of Cherry brandy, and it is the only sort which ought to be used by nurserymen for their stocks, on which to bud and graft the better kinds.

27. TOBACCO LEAVED.

Bigarreautier à feuilles de Tabac. Bon. Jard. 1827.

p. 296.

Cerisier de 4 à la livre.

Four to the pound.

Ib. 1825. p. 239.
Of some Nurseries.

Quatre à la livre. Hort. Trans. Vol. iv. p. 511. Fruit small, heart shaped, of a pale transparent yellow colour, with a faint stain of red on the exposed side. Flesh of firm consistence, sweet and pleasant, but without any particular richness. Stalk long and the stone large, in proportion to the size of the fruit.

Ripe in August.

The young branches, in the Nursery, are very strong, and crooked; and the leaves of the very largest size.

How this Cherry should have obtained its name of four to the pound, I am at a loss to conceive: its fruit is not half the size of our Kentish Cherry, and not of one fiftieth part of its value for any purpose whatever. Nurserymen will do well to get rid of it altogether.

28. WHITE HEART. Langley. t. 18. f.4.

Guignier à gros fruit blanc. Duhamel, t. 1. f.3.

Fruit growing in pairs or threes, middle-sized, heart-shaped, of a dull whitish yellow colour, tinged and mottled with dull muddy red on the side next the sun. Stalk two inches long, very slender, inserted in a hollow round basin. Flesh melting, juicy, of a rich and pleasant flavour.

Ripe the end of July and beginning of August.

The branches of this sort are slender, diverging, with a reddish-brown epidermis.

A Selection of Cherries for a small Garden in the Southern and Midland Counties of England.

Northern Counties of England, and Southern of Scotland.

Cherries in the Highlands of Scotland must be trained against walls, and have the best aspect.

Propagation.

Cherries are propagated by budding and grafting upon the small Black Cherry stock. Those intended for standards are always worked standard high.

In the nursery it ought not to be attempted to work dwarfs among standards, except on those stocks which have not grown up sufficiently high for the purpose of standards, as they never make good plants when overgrown by the upper crop. upper crop. Dwarfs are at all times the best when grown by themselves; and if good bedded stocks have been quartered out, they will generally be fit to graft when they have been planted a year.

As I have observed before, when speaking of apples, budding is not to be recommended for dwarfs, as they never make such good plants as those which have been grafted.

In order, therefore, to preserve a uniformity in a quarter of cherries, and to grow them with the least possible waste, it is necessary the stocks should be assorted previously to their being planted out, selecting the handsomest and best, and as nearly of a size as possible for standards; the smaller and less handsome ones may follow in the quarter to be employed for dwarfs. By pursuing this method the crop of both standards and dwarfs will be regular, and much better than when the weak plants have to contend with the strong, and the least waste will in all cases be occasioned.

Pruning and Training.

Standard cherries for the orchard require the same management, generally, as standard apples, and the same method may be pursued as directed under that head;

but as the former of these are more generally raised from buds than from grafts, they will at first require a different treatment, namely, that of heading them down the first year. On this account they ought never to be planted later than the end of October, or the middle of November: this early planting will enable the trees to make fresh roots previously to the spring, when, in April, as soon as the buds begin to break out, they should be headed down to within three or four inches of the place where they had been budded. If the trees be good, there will be a sufficient number of eyes to produce as many shoots as will be required to furnish the head should more than four be produced, they should be reduced to this number, of such as are the best placed. These must be allowed to extend at length without being shortened, nothing further being required than to cut out superfluous shoots, so as to keep the head uniform and handsome. If the heads of young trees be carefully attended to the first three or four years, they will rarely get into confusion afterwards; they must, nevertheless, be looked over frequently, as shoots are occasionally produced, through a local injury of the branch, which may require to be removed.

Espalier cherries, and those trained against the wall, require precisely the same management, both as to pruning and training. For this purpose, trees which have been grafted are always to be preferred to those which have been raised from buds: they must be cut back at the commencement, as directed for Apricots ; but the branches, except in Morellos, must be trained horizontally instead of obliquely, and always continued at their full length. In Dukes and Hearts the branches should be eight or nine inches apart, beginning at the bottom of the tree, and continuing each additional shoot in a parallel direction, till the number of series the wall will permit be completed.

This mode of training will give a curved direction, more or less, after the first two or three on each side have been formed, to every additional shoot before it gains its horizontal direction; in consequence of which, lateral shoots must be secured from the last series in their ascent, in order to fill up the middle of the tree.

After this there will be nothing further required than to cut off all additional shoots as they are produced, to within half an inch from whence they sprang: the month of May will be soon enough for the first pruning, and July for the second; after which there will seldom be any more produced in that year. As the trees acquire age, the spurs will advance in length; but these must be kept within due bounds by cutting them out whenever they exceed three or four inches: by this means full sized and perfect specimens of fruit will always be obtained.

Morello Cherries require a different mode of treatment: they are best trained obliquely, in the fan manner, the same as Apricots: their fruit is produced from the last year's shoots, and upon spurs from the older branches; but the younger those spurs the finer the fruit; so that all spurs above two years old ought to be removed.

The Morello Cherry produces a greater number of shoots than any other variety under similar treatment. This induces many gardeners to crowd their trees with double, and sometimes triple, the number of branches which they ought to have, to the great injury of the fruit, without adding in the least either to the bulk or weight of the crop.

In assigning some limit to this practice, I would recommend, that none of the branches should be trained nearer to each other than three inches, and from that to four and five, continuing the out-leaders at full length, as also those which follow at different distances;