128 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



PRUNING. 



For this fruit the pyramid or cone more properly is suited, this being the 

 natural form of the tree, as in the Urbanite, though seme, as the Juhenne, will 

 assume a spreading or rounded form, hke the apple tree. I prefer to shorten 

 in annually until the tree commences bearing or the head is Avell foimed: 

 afterwards, merely thinning out s-hoots that cress or interfere with the proper 

 shape of the tree. From two and a half to three feet high I like to form the 

 heads of standai'd trees, but on the quince from twelve to eighteen inches is 

 high enough If a tree is exhausted from overbearing it may be resuscitated 

 by close pruning, thinning of the fruit spurs and generous cultivation. 

 Should wood growth be excessive and fruiting retarded, the former may be 

 checked and the latter hastened by summer pinching and root pruning. 

 Right here let me mention a practice which I might denominate quackery 

 in the management of trees. I have repeatedly heard statements like the 

 following: "Mr. A. had a pear tree that had grown twenty years without 

 producing a pear. Some one told him he ought to whip it. Accordingly, 

 he got a lot of brush and stout switches and literallj^ wore them out in thrash- 

 ing the tree. Next season it produced a fine crop of fruit." Another will 

 say : " My neighbor B. had a tree that would not bear and he drove nails in 

 the trunk, numbers of them, and the tree afterwards bore good fruit." Others 

 will bore holes in the tree, some putting in calomel, some sulpher, and so on, 

 and then drive in a plug to stop the hole, and the tree afterwards set a crop 

 of fruit. Ignorant of the principle that underlies these practices, some sup- 

 pose that if from any cause they have trees that fail to bear, such trees must 

 be whipped, pierced with nails or bored, and dosed with drugs, when in many 

 cases manuring and generous cultivation are what the tree really needs; re- 

 minding one of the man who asked his neighbor what he should do to fatten 

 his horse; he had tried every tonic he could hear of and none did any good, 

 when his neighbor surprised him with the question, " Did you ever try corn 

 and fodder?" The principle is this: Whatever tends to check excessive 

 wood growth, will hasten the production of fruit. Whipping, boring, etc., 

 check the sap by mutilating the sap vessels of the tree. The sap then, of 

 ■course, flows more slowly through them, is better elaborated, becomes richer, 

 and in the condition necessary for the formation of fruit buds. Root prun- 

 ing lessens the supply of sap, and with summer pinching will accomplish the 

 end with least injury to the tree, and is the only proper practice. I do not 

 suppose that any intelligent cultivator before me would be guilty of such 

 practices as I have mentioned; but these papers contributed here are likely 

 to reach some who are not so intelligent, and it is one of the missions of this 

 Society to correct popular errors in fruit culture. 



VARIETIES. 



Here cultivators are likely to differ considerablj^ each estimating a fit va- 

 riety by its value in his locality for certain purposes. If I were asked what 

 -variety stands at the head of the list for cultivation in the South, for general 



