TRANSACTIONS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY oF NORTHERN TT,L. 389 



his land, eight feet from the fence, and some twenty feet apart in the 

 row. These were top-grafted, standard height, taking off the entire top, 

 and the grafts grew well, but there are only two perfect trees left. 1'ive 

 more are alive, with large patches of dead bark, and twelve are dead. It 

 is probably better to wait until you can go into the limbs and top-graft, 

 saving always the lower limbs to shade the bod\- on the south and west 

 sides. 



Pruning. — We prefer March antl mid-summer for pruning, although we 

 can cut a small limb at any time. We cut as few large limbs as possible, 

 and favor moderate ])riining, both in the apple and grape. Some farmers 

 attack their orchards with axe and .saw on the large limbs, and professed 

 pruners mutilate many trees to their great and permanent injury. Last 

 fall we saw a Northern Spy tree, fourteen miles east of Kalamazoo, 

 Michigan, which, three years before, had borne over fifty bushels of 

 apples. Since that, a pruner took off about half of the limbs, and has 

 greatly lessened its capacity for bearing. When limbs of an inch or 

 more in diameter are taken off, we let the surface dry two or three days, 

 then paint the stump with common white paint; in a few more days 

 apply another coat. The linseed oil, being a vegetable oil, does not 

 injure the tree. We liave used it long enough to know. 



DISCUSSION ON DR. MYGATT'S ESSAY. 



Mr. Nelson — 1 don't think it safe to cut plum and pear cions in the 

 spring, at the time of grafting, as they are liable to have their vitality so 

 much reduced by severe winter weather that they will not grow vigorously, 

 if at all. 



Mr. WiER — I wish to call attention to the root-killing of trees men- 

 tioned in the essay. We have had wrong teachings upon this subject. 

 Last winter we had a Wisconsin or Minnesota winter, with the ground 

 very dry. In one block of trees in my nursery, upon different kinds of 

 soil, even the Ben Davis root-killed in patches where the sub.soil dried 

 out. I had four rows of peach trees, seventy rods long, across a sandy 

 ridge in which were depressions; and the roots were killed, except in the 

 depressions. The tops of all the root-killed trees were alive, and some 

 of them blossomed. 



Dr. Mvoatt — I advise my friends to /r)' cutting pear and i)lum cions 

 and grafting at once. I don't lose five per cent, of them. 



The Pkesidknt — I have known the sap-wood of pears and plums to 

 be blackened by the severe cold of winters, so that cions would not grow ; 

 yet, after mild winters, they will do well cut and grafted as Dr. Mygatt 

 suggests. 



Mr. McWhorter — We have learned, by experience, to cut our cions 

 in the autumn. It is not safe to trust to cutting in spring. 



