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Tlic CoiLutry Gcntlcinaiis Alagaainc 



Plants in towns suffer in the same way, and 

 horticultural societies and large nurserymen, 

 who have Chiswick's or country gardens to 

 send them too, can pack off their sickly plants 

 to these sanitariums. But suppose that 

 instead of the child suffering from the want 

 of good air, it had the converse complaint of 

 want of good lungs. What could be done 

 then ? This is the complaint of the trees in 

 too thick a plantation, or which have under- 

 gone the process of having their branches 

 shortened. The air above is pure, plentiful, 

 and wholesome ; but its own lungs (its leaves) 

 are damaged, or half gone. 



If the lungs are injured or defective, the 

 plant cannot thrive, or at least it cannot 

 thrive so well as if it had them sound. It 

 stands to reason — and no appeal to the results 

 of treatment can ever get over it. When a 

 medical quack, on the faith of some anoma- 

 lous results, challenges our assent to his 

 system, we shrug our shoulders, and say we 

 may be unable to account for them on other 

 principles, but for all that we do not believe 

 his : so, if the advocates of this system of 

 pruning or shortening were to adduce results 

 apparently favourable from the practice, we 

 should treat it in the same way • but we deny 

 that any such results can be shewn. The 

 energy of youth may overcome the mischief, 

 but it is health in spite of the treatment, not 

 in consequence of it. 



Mr Brown's rationale of the advantage of 

 this shortening is as false in reasoning as 

 the advantage is unfounded in fact : — 

 "Were all the branches left upon the young 

 trees, the roots, from the effects of removal, 

 would not be able to supply the whole with 

 due nourishment, and the consequence would 

 very likely be that the plants would die down 

 to the ground level." Supposing it to be 

 that the roots could not supply the whole 

 with nourishment, it would be better to leave 

 it to nature to say how much it can and how 

 much it cannot bear. If nature finds that 

 there are more branches than she can support, 

 they will die off, and she herself will remove 

 them. It is the same principle as applies to 

 decay in large branches, which are better left 

 to slough off by themselves than pruned off. 



The inferences to be drawn from the 

 modern processes of orchard-pruning, too, en- 

 tirely support our view. The object of the 

 fruit-grower is not to get timber, but fruit \ 

 consequently, root-pruning and pinching off 

 the leaf-buds is the process which a priori we 

 should expect to militate against the growth 

 of timber : they throw the tree back in its 

 health, and give the plant that tendency to 

 excessive production of fruit which is nature's 

 instinctive effort to preserve the species from 

 extinction. A multitude of instances might 

 be given to the same effect : none more in- 

 structive than one mentioned by Mr Glutton, 

 of an oak tree in a garden-hedge, which had 

 been clipped and pruned incessantly, and 

 although eighty years old, had never reached 

 the thickness of a man's knee. Another 

 example, of common occurrence, may be 

 seen in village gardens, where a small tree, 

 with a round head and bare stalk, like a 

 mushroom or an orange tree, often occupies 

 the centre of a plot : no one ever saw any 

 such tree come to anything ; they remain 

 hideous examples of the result of pruning, and 

 will remain so as long as they live. 



An inevitable corollary to all this is, that 

 pruning is injurious to the growth of timber, 

 and ought not to be practised where that is 

 what is wanted. For what object may -we 

 then prune? One, and almost the only 

 allowable one, is to remove one of two leaders 

 competing for the mastery ; another is, where 

 there is an unsightly or unsymmetrical branch 

 which offends the eye, and disturbs, as we 

 think, the beauty of the tree. Ten to one 

 its removal will only make things worse, 

 and it would be better to cut down the tree 

 altogether than to touch the branch. But 

 these (the only objects in whose behalf any- 

 thing can be said in favour of pruning) are 

 not the ordinary occasions in which pruning 

 is perpetrated; they are rare, and seldom 

 occur. The everyday mutilation has no such 

 apology. Every forester goes about armed 

 with a knife ; and he has some foggy idea 

 that by cutting off the little twigs which sprout 

 from the trunk or branches, or taking off those 

 which he imagines may by-and-bye interfere 

 with others, he is in some way improving the 



