1 879.] NOTES FROM THE PAPERS. 447 



ping from the trees. The latter, too, are in some places almost leafless. 

 Cherries, with the exception of Morellos, cracked and rotted on the trees. 

 Even as far north as Durham, the Morello has been better on standards than 

 on walls — a fact worth noting, seeing that, in addition to its fruit, the growth 

 of the tree itself is highly ornamental. Damsons are everywhere reported to 

 be good, and in some places even heavy crops. Next to these stand Victoria 

 and the Orleans, Plums that seldom fail. Nuts are good in many places, but 

 Walnuts are a failure. All small fruits have been heavy crops, but flavour- 

 less; and Gooseberries have been in many places stripped of their leaves by 

 the Gooseberry caterpillar. Of little known fruits, Helena Gloede Straw- 

 berry is spoken of as being a valuable late kind; and Stone's Apple, a local 

 Kentish variety, is reported as being a sort that well deserves more extensive 

 cultivation than it has hitherto received. Worcester Pearmain, a beautiful 

 Apple, is also stated to be good." 



Mr Ralph Carr Ellison, who writes interestingly on woodcraft in the 

 ' Journal of Forestry,' makes some remarks on the subject of pruning that 

 may interest your readers. He says : — 



" Let every large branch that is to come off be cut twice and in two places, 

 first a good yard or more above the place where the true amputation is to be 

 made. This in order to get rid of weight, and to prevent rending and splitting 

 near to the stem of the tree. The final cut of any limb, branch, or branchlet 

 should be made just above or outside of the ring-swell or encircling protuberance 

 of bark and wood which surrounds its butt, and so as to leave the ring-swell 

 untouched by the saw. The only instruments that should be used to insure 

 protection of the ring-swell, when a branch is to be amputated, are the saw, 

 the chisel and mallet, and the pocket-knife. All axes, hatchets, bills, and 

 billhooks should be disallowed, after Pontey's excellent advice, — for no work- 

 man, however dexterous, can be trusted with an edge instrument to be used 

 by striking. The axe is admirable for felling timber, the adze for dressing it 

 when felled, the light axe and hatchet for ' snedding ' small wood or cutting 

 coppice, but none of them are suitable for pruning. It is perfectly true that 

 the hardihood of our native trees enables them to live through a great deal of 

 hard usage and deplorable tree-surgery, in the way of slicing and scarifying ; 

 but the moment you apply the same freaks to tenderer subjects — to Peach and 

 Plum trees, to the finer varieties of Apple and Pear— you meet with your 

 reward in the sudden decline and death of the wounded stem and all its 

 cherished developments in the second or third year, if not in the first, after 

 the audacious operation of cutting away the ring-swell of some considerable 

 branch." 



Perhaps the horticultural reader will agree with us that Mr Ellison rather 

 exaggerates the evil of ' ' cutting away the ring-swell " in the case of fruit-trees. 

 If we are not mistaken, the rule is more honoured in the breach than in the 

 observance, and is not so much as noticed by authorities on fruit culture. To 

 leave the ring-swell of some " considerable branch " would, in the case of some 

 stone fruits, be to leave a knob or protuberance which, decaying, would be very 

 apt to produce gumming, whereas if cut clean away it would heal over perfectly. 

 In the same journal we notice an experienced forester, writing on the same 

 subject, takes no account of the "ring-swell," but gives directions for cutting 

 branches off close to the trunk. Mr Carr writes pleasantly and instructively 

 "on the functions of the lower branches of trees," but we are afraid sometimes 

 hypothetically as well. Speaking on this topic, he tells us that ' ' the wisdom 

 in nature is never at rest till it has done something to shade or to shield the 



