240 Pruivhig in Summer. [May, 



[For the Cincinnatus. 

 PRUNING INSUMMEE. 



BY G. M. KERN . 



Horticulturists and Gardeners unanimously concur in the opinion 

 that pruning is an important operation. Different opinions, however, 

 obtain among them concerning the manner in which this important 

 operation may he most successfully and profitably performed. If we 

 ask the industrious nurseryman or orchardist wliy he annually cuts off 

 so many large branches, and twigs, and buds, from his trees, we are told 

 that such procedure is necessary to obtain fine, straight, and thrifty 

 trees, to secure well proportioned heads, and to produce therefrom a 

 bauntiful crop of fruit. The vegetable gardener and florist, also, 

 freely employ the pruning knife. The one stoops down over his cucumber 

 vines to make them accommodate themselves to the narrow limits of a 

 hot-bed, in view of forcing them to bear an early crop ; and the other 

 tops and stops his plants in pots in order to obtain a bushy and profusely 

 flowering growth. The vine dresser, too, finds it indispensable to trim 

 his vines that he may produce an abundant harvest of the grape, and 

 of " wine that maketh glad the heart of man." And, with the hedge- 

 grower, pruning is the all important work which alone is able to render 

 his endeavors profitable and successful ; and he has yet to contend, it 

 seems, with an endless multitude of opinions, countless queries, and 

 innumerable vexations, resulting from the unsettled state of our general 

 knowledge on this particular subject. In all these various branches of 

 Horticulture, pruning aims to attain one common object ; it must be the 

 means employed to give us entire control over the hona-jide growth or 

 vegetation of the plant or tree. And, as now-a-days, the light of science 

 is beginning to shine in every quarter — reaching, we trust, every 

 gardener's and farmer's soul — great pains are taken by various horticul- 

 turists to base all their practical operations upon a sure and scientific 

 foundation, for which vegetable physiology furnishes them ample material. 

 Great indeed have been the advances which horticulture has made 

 through the agency of science applied to pruning ; and greater, still, 

 will be its progress when those engaged in horticulture shall come to the 

 full understanding and appreciation of the essential principles of this 

 department of science. "VYe shall hope then, that, no one will be tempted 



