Spring Promises Some of our fruit-growers are forecasting a wonderful
season of blossom next spring. Their grounds of expectation are that fruit-buds for the most part are formed in early autumn, and were more than usually encouraged by the sunny dryness of last August and September. These fat fruit-buds are now distinguishable from the thin leaf-buds, and they are perhaps satisfactorily numerous. Here and there the weather was too favourable, and next year's buds opened six months too soon. Hdwever, we have certainly enjoyed a season of promise, and the sequent frosts are themselves an advantage. They arrest too late growth, which often is the ruin of certain fruit-trees in the warm South West, and harden the wood. Let us hope for the best from the " condition precedent"; but it is no more than that. A good fruit year depends much less on the sheer amount of blossom than the proportion of blossom spring con- ditions allow to be fertilised.
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