i88r.] NOTES FROM THE PAPERS. 267 



and training fruit-trees, in which the lecturer, adopting the suggestions 

 of previous writers and practitioners, advocated what is now called the 

 extension system in its most extreme form. At that time, the ' Gar- 

 deners' Chronicle' took up the subject in one of its leading articles. 

 It lamented that the lecturer had not deemed the Royal Horticultural 

 Society *'a fitting place for such a disputation." It wanted, it said, 

 "a professor of the art of pruning" there, who was glib of speech and 

 dexterous with the knife, " to show how it was done.'' Your contem- 

 porary adopted the lecturer's views then, and declared that ^' it required 

 no great amount of persjncacity to see" that the advocate of no pruning 

 was "/;er/ec^/?/ right, however much his assertions might go against the 

 grain of some folks ; " and it demanded to know " how we should 

 prune, or rather if we should prune at all.'' Answering this question 

 itself, it asserted that " under a healthy state of things we ought never 

 to prune at all, whether for timber or for fruit ;'' and it cautioned gar- 

 deners to follow the example of the surgeon, and " avoid the use of the 

 knife" — to learn to look "with reverence on the tissues they could 

 destroy, but not replace ; " and upon the whole, to regard pruning in 

 general as a very bad thing. It deprecated "ignorant clamour," and 

 ended by " laying it down as a principle, and having reference solely to 

 the life and vigour of the plant, that all pruning was mischievous^ 



The article in the ' Chronicle ' containing these statements will be 

 fresh in the minds of readers ; for it is but yesterday, one might say, 

 that they were written, and nothing has happened in the interval to 

 change its opinions on the subject, but rather the reverse. 



But turn we now to a leading article of the same type, in the same 

 paper, and on the same subject, in its issue of May 7th : — 



" Every one admits that pruning is more or less an unnatural process, 

 though it is by no means wholly so, for Nature does a good deal in that way 

 herself. Every one admits that a great deal of unintelligent, unnecessary, 

 and, worse still, mischievous pruning is done. But because this is so, it by 

 no means follows that all pruning is bad. ... In most cases, and 

 especially in small private gardens, we want the tree to conform to our require- 

 ments and the exigencies of time and space. TFe secure this, amongst other 

 things, by judicious pruning. It may well be that in the long-run the trees suffer in 

 some way by this mutilation — but if it be to, it has to be proven, and in any case this 

 can be provided against ; there are more behind, and, tinder the circumstances, the 

 advantages more than compensate for the disadvantages.'" (The italics are ours.) 



What is any one to think who began by following the advice given 

 in the first article when he reads the last ? If your contemporary 

 forgets what it says and does, its readers have better memories. In 

 its former article, it declared that it was " clear from the teachings of 

 science that the practical rule to be laid down in all cases is not to 

 prune more than is strictly necessary ; " and how much it considered 

 " necessary," may be gathered from its other admissions recorded above. 



Reader. 



