The Fruit Growers Guide (In 2 Volumes)

More than thirty years have passed since the first edition of the "Fruit-Grower’s Guide" was published. The work was issued originally in monthly parts, and subsequently in three large parts, and subsequently in three large volumes. it enjoyed a conspicuous success in both. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century a great wave of interest in the cultivation of fruit swept over the country, and with gardening libraries signally weak in comprehensive books on fruit-growing, the want of a standard work on the subject, written, edited and illustrated by experts whose qualifications none could dispute, was made manifest. The "Fruit -Grower’s Guide" came -and conquered. It was essentially practical; it dealt with every phase of fruit-growing; it was profusely and beautifully illustrated. Its appeal was universal and overwhelming. it is not too much to say that the "Fruit -Growers Guide" paved the way for the remarkable extension of fruit-growing, both private and commercial, which has taken place during the past thirty years. Thousands of acres of fruit have been planted for marketing, hundred upon hundreds of amateurs have added fruit to their gardens. Profit has fallen to the commercial grower; benefit of another nature has accrued to the home cultivator. Meanwhile, great changes have taken place, Under the stimulus of the Government, science has been applied to fruit-growing. agricultural and horticultural colleges, farm institutes, research stations, laboratories and experimental stations have been established, and trained minds have been brought to bear on fruit problems. New varieties have been introduced; new methods of attacking pests have been discovered; improved methods of packing and marketing (still, alas! all too loosely applied) have been found; great exhibitions have been held; fresh systems of pruning and feeding have been devised. One concrete example, chosen from many, must suffice to illustrate the necessity for the exhaustive revision to which the first edition of the "Fruitgrower’s Guide" has been subjected. Silver leaf (Stereum purpureum), which has threatened the complete destruction of the Victoria Plum in recent years, and is scarcely less virulent in some other Plums, in Cherries, and in several pples, is not directly, or even indirectly, referred to I the original Work. if, as is probable, it was present in Plum trees at that time, it must have been very rare and in a form not nearly as devastating as in the present day. To graft on to the old, sound, practical stock which my late father established, the scion of modern scientific methods, and so produce a "Fruit-Grower’s Guide" with the best of the old and the best of the new in one harmonious blend, has been my onerous, but pleasing, task. The result is now offered, in two volumes, and I can only hope for the present work an equal measure of success to that which befell its predecessor. The present edition has been arranged with a view to the inclusion of numerous fresh chapters. Every modern discovery, the cream of every fresh movement, special and copious details of the best marketing methods -these and other features give the work new and vivid interest. Yet much of the original and valuable material from the first edition, full as it was and is of practical information which cannot be found in any other book on fruit, has been retained after adequate revision.