For restocking old worn-out apple orchards, in Worcestershire at any rate, there is nothing to equal plum-trees; they flourished amazingly at Aldington, and soon made up for the lost apples; they appeared to follow the principle that dictates the rotation of ordinary crops, just as the leguminous plants alternate satisfactorily with the graminaceous, or, as I have read that in Norway, where a fir forest has been cut, birch will spring up automatically and take its place.

My predecessor always sold his plums on the trees for the buyer to harvest, and I heard that when the former turned a flock of Dorset ewes into one of these orchards, the buyer complained—­the lower branches being heavily laden, and within a few feet of the ground—­that he had watched, “Them old yows holding down bunches of plums with their harns for t’others to eat.”  This I imagine was in the nature of hyperbole, and not intended to be taken literally.

I had about forty cherry trees in one of my orchards, and among them a very early kind of black cherry, as well as Black Bigarreaus, White Heart and Elton Heart.  The early ones made particularly good prices, but when the French cherries began to be imported, being on the market a week or two before ours they “took the keen edge off the demand,” though wretched-looking things in comparison.  The cherries from my forty trees made L80 one year when the crop was good, but they are expensive to pick as there is much shifting of heavy ladders, and the work was done by men.  In Kent, I believe, women are employed at cherry-picking, ascending forty-round ladders in a gale of wind without a sign of nervousness, but with a man in attendance to pack the fruit and shift the ladders when required.  I found Liverpool the best market for cherries, where they were bought by the large steamship companies for the Transatlantic liners, and where they were in demand for the seaside and holiday places in North Wales and Lancashire.  Like the pear-trees, the cherry-trees are very beautiful in spring, and again in autumn, and as mine could be seen from the house and garden, they added a great charm to the place.

I must put in a word here for the bullfinch, which is unreasonably persecuted for its supposed destruction of the cherry crop when in bloom; it undoubtedly picks many blossoms to pieces, but probably no ultimate loss of weight follows; very few comparatively of the blooms ever become fruits in any case, and even if some are thus nipped in the bud, it is probable that the remainder mature into larger and finer cherries in consequence.  The advantage of thinning is recognized in the case of all our fruits, and is indeed, the reason for pruning.  The vine-grower knows well the truth of the saying that, “You should get your enemy to thin your grapes,” and I would sacrifice many cherries for a few of these beautiful birds in my garden, for man does not live by bread alone.

One of the old couplets, of which our forefathers were so fond, runs: