knowledge which constitutes the science of managing and pruning the orchard and fruit 

 garden, in their most essential particulars, the inducement and maintainance of fruitful- 

 ness; and it is in accordance with these propositions my classification will be attemped, 

 dividing the several processes of pruning into two classes, according to their repective na- 

 ture, and adding to each class such other processes as are adopted by cultivators in aid of 

 pruning. 



Class I. — Stimulants to the wood-bud force — to be applied as preventives to trees and 

 plants in bearing, when disposed to feebleness, or as remedies, where feebleness from over 

 bearing is present: 



1. Cutting out or removing at any time, in M'hole or in part, as the case may require, 

 from a tree or plant, the fruit-bud system. 



2. Shortening-in the wood branches at any time after the close of one growing season, 

 and before the commencement of another. 



3. Cultivation of the ground. 



4. Manuring. 



5. Any device for destroying hurtful insects or mosses, and for securing the health of 

 the roots or leaves. 



Class II. — Debilitants to be applied as preventives against over-luxuriance in bearing 

 trees or plants disposed to excessive wood growth, or as remedies where the trees or 

 plants are unfruitful by reason of the non-development of fruit-buds. 



1. Stinting supplies of food — by confining the tree or plant to a pasturage of limited 

 space, through means of root-pruning, or of stocks having a small system of roots. 



2. Neglected cultivation. 



3. Ketarding the circulation, by bending the branches and destroying capillarity. 



4. Breaking the circuit of circulation during the growing season, and before the roots 

 have received an equivalent in vigor and enlargement, for the supplies sent upward in the 

 circulation. 



It Avill be seen from the list of stimulants, that I enumerate two distinct processes of 

 shortening-in; one, proper only between the growing seasons; the other at all times stim- 

 ulating, in consequence, as I have supposed, of the parasitical nature of the parts remov- 

 ed. The bearing apple tree often exhibits striking proof of the parasitical action of the 

 fruit-bearing force upon the vigor of the tree, as also of the efficiency of shortening-in as 

 a counteracting stimulant; for it often happens that during the growth and maturation of 

 an excessive crop, not a particle of wood seems to be formed; indeed even the fruit-buds 

 for the succeeding )'ear, which generally lie at the point of the spur sustaining the fruit 

 which is being matured, are often starved out, or rendered so feeble as to perish in the fol- 

 lowing winter. Whenever the terminal fruit-bud is destroyed in this way, wood growth, 

 more frequently than otherwise, takes place from the first bud below or within the termi- 

 nal bud thus destroyed. This is shortening-in, performed by removing a portion of the 

 fruit-bud system, before the commencement of the growing season; one of the most unmis- 

 table instances of this process, and of its efficiency as performed by accidental means, oc- 

 curred under my observation in 1851, with two White Doj'enne Pears upon quince stock, 

 subjected on the first of May, when in full leaf and fruit, to a temperature of twenty de- 

 grees; every fruit, every leaf, and every bud was killed, and many fruit spurs sloughed off; 

 but now those trees are covered Avith a vigorous wood growth, many branches exceeding 

 a foot in length, although at the time of the frost, and for some years before, there was 

 present that scantiness of wood growth common to the pear dwarfed on the quince when 

 in bearing. 



