l-i'2 Mi<isissippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



like the attempt of two railroad trains to pass each other upon a single track 

 — not a success. 



The very self-sufficient, young horticulturist may imagine that nature is 

 mistaken in placing a ligature of outer, fibrous bark around the cherry tree 

 to restrict its growth, and he may attempt to remedy the error by slitting it 

 vertically, or by even peeling it wholly away ; but the outcome will surely 

 convince him that her mistakes are fewer than he had supposed, and that 

 she rarely exchanges ruts with even the most expert horticulturist. 



The immigrant from the cool, humid climate of old England, whose sub- 

 dued temperatures and mellow lights are born of the tepid waters, tempered 

 by the torrid suns of our tropic gulf, and thrown upon her shores by our 

 wonderful ocean river, will have, under these conditions, worn for himself a 

 rut in which he will possibly essay to travel on this, side the water— telling 

 us to use the knife freely upon our orchard trees—" open their heads and let 

 in the air and light;" but time and experience will surely teach him that 

 this rut accords not with the general law of nature, but is, instead, a merely 

 local sequence, and not to be tolorated here — especially not under the 

 brighter and more arid skies of the West, with its extreme alternations of 

 temperature. 



On the other hand, there are those among us, even "to the manor born," 

 who assert that, at the period when the horticultural afflatus may be expected 

 to inspire them to action, and when their imjiulsive jack-knives marshall for 

 the fray against the persistent efforts of nature, possibly for the repair of 

 earlier mistakes, they manage to lose these, in their estimation, objectionable 

 implements; intimating their opposition to all pruning; and thus, in dissent 

 from the previous idea, vibrating, pendulum like, to the opposite extreme; 

 and making to themselves a counter-rut, possibly quite as far aside from the 

 true and proper mean. 



This very human tendency to draw conclusions and fall into practices, 

 based upon an inadequate conception of principles or facts, often, if not. in- 

 deed, visually accepting the conclusions or practice of others, at second-hand, 

 lies, very largely, at the foundation of the faitlty practice and unprofitable 

 rut-following, even of those engaged in horticultural pursuits, to say nothing 

 of others. 



Of all those who grow the peach, how few have learned that nature has 

 established for it the invariable law, that neither foliage nor fruit can be pro- 

 duced from wood of more than a single year's growth; and hence, that the 

 life of a shoot, beyond the second year, except by an extension of its growth, 

 is impossible. Upon this fact, or in this rut, lies the basis of all successful 

 management of the peach tree. Its strong tendency, at least in our Northern 

 climate, to the continuous elongation of its stronger shoots, to the detriment 

 of the weaker ones, justifies, if indeed it does not necessitate the adaption of 

 the " shortening in system of pruning : " as a means of forcing the weaker 

 shoots into annual growth, supplying to them a renewed crop of buds, for 

 the production of foliage and fruit, and thus rescuing them from otherwise 

 inevitable death. 



