58 On a new Method of training Fruit Trees. 



sycamore becomes specifically heavier as it ascends towards 

 the buds ; which, I think, affords sufficient evidence that the 

 alburnum of trees becomes during winter a reservoir of the 

 sap or blood of the tree, as the bulb of the hyacinth, tulip, 

 and the tuber of the potatoe, certainly do of the sap or biood 

 of those plants. Now a wall-tree, from the advantageous 

 position of its leaves relative to the light, probably generates 

 much more sap, comparatively with the number of its buds, 

 than a standard tree of the same size ; and when it attempts 

 to employ its reserved sap in the spring, the gardener is 

 compelled to destroy (and frequently does so too soon and 

 too abruptly) a very large portion of the small succulent 

 shoots emitted, and the aphis too often prevents the growth 

 of those which remain. The sap in consequence stagnates, 

 and appears often to choke the passages through the small 

 branches ; which in consequence become incurably un- 

 healthy, and stunted in their growth : and nature then finds 

 means of employing the accumulated sap, which, if retained, 

 would generate the morbid exudation, gum, in the produc- 

 tion of luxuriant shoots. These shoots, our gardeners, from 

 Langley to Forsyth, have directed to be shortened in sum- 

 mer, or cut out in the succeeding spring ; but I have found 

 great advantages in leaving them wholly unshortened ; when 

 they have uniformly produced the finest possible bearing 

 wood for the succeeding year ; and so far is this practice 

 from having a tendency to render naked the lower or in- 

 ternal parts of the tree, whence those branches spring, that 

 the strongest shoots they afford invariably issue from the 

 buds near their bases. I have also found that the laterals 

 that spring from these luxuriant shoots, if stopped at the 

 first leaf, often afford very strong blossoms and fine fruit in 

 the succeeding season. Whenever therefore space can be 

 found to train in a luxuriant shoot, I think it should rarely 

 or never be either cut out, or shortened : it should, how^ 

 ever, never be trained perpendicularly, where that can be 

 avoided, 



VIII. Pm< 



