Talk in the apple orchard. 



future; and vre shall have to write a good while longer, before men will be persuaded to 

 plant for the future, at such present sacrifice as is involved in surrendering the entire in- 

 come of their best and most convenient land, even for so long a period as is required in 

 bringing an orchard into bearing. 



The objections to early spring pruning are, that the wounds then made do not heal so 

 readily as when the tree is in full process of growth. This is, perhaps, true, and may be 

 admitted as a fact, without being practically entitled to much weight, because I think with 

 us, vigorous trees seldom suffer any delayer failure in the healing of wounds made in 

 pruning, at either season. 



I have said that our grafting is all done in April. The old native trees are fast being 

 changed to finer fruit, and thousands of stocks are grafted every spring. The work is of- 

 ten done carelessly. Limbs of two or more inches in diameter are cut off, the scions in- 

 serted, the grafting cement is spread on, and no further attention given to the matter. 

 And yet it is very rare to see a stock dead, or imperfectly healed, even under the rudest 

 treatment, and such being the fact, there can be little danger of injury from the cause re- 

 ferred to, in pruning with ordinarj' care at the season of grafting. 



I have recently examined several orchards which have been uniformly pruned in April, 

 and among the rest that of Fkeeye Dearborn-, Esq., of this place. His trees are among 

 the best within my knowledge. He informs me that he raised them from the seed, planted 

 about twenty-six years ago; and set them where they now stand, nineteen years ago. He 

 gathered one hundred and fifty barrels of the Baldwin, last year, from forty trees — being 

 all the trees in one enclosure, which are old enough to be reckoned bearing trees. He has 

 many others, principally of a younger growth. From one of the forty, he took nine bar- 

 rels of fine fruit. 



If we judge Mr. Dearborn by his fruits, we must concede that his principles cannot 

 be far from correct. Upon examining his orchard with him, for the purpose, we could find 

 no indication in any instance, that injury had resulted from pruning. There appeared no 

 mark of disease or decay where the branches had been cut off, and yet Mr. Dearborn 

 says he has pruned always in spring, and has never applied anything to the wounds, 

 or even used a knife, after removing the limbs with a saw. 



So much for the practice, and now let us see how the most rational theories correspond 

 with these results. I shall attempt no scientific examination of the question by what poiv- 

 er in nature the circulation of the sap is carried on. Some fiicts in regard to it, are obvi- 

 ous. "We know that in the spring the sap rises from the roots to the branches. That it 

 rises not by capillary attraction merely, and not, in the first instance, by any attracting 

 power, exerted by or through the loaf-buds or branches, would seem to be true, because 

 the sap flows in great quantities from the stumps of trees recently cut. Every boy in a 

 sap-sugar country, has drunk from the top of a rock-maple stump, hollowed out to retain 

 the up-rising sap. Whether as much sap flows from such a stump as could have been 

 drawn from the tree, by tapping in the ordinary mode, I have no means of knowing. The 

 pressure of the up-rising sap is, at its first flow, very great. In Gregory's Dictionary of 

 Arts and Sciences, it is stated that by afiixing tubes to the stumps of vines cut off at the 

 rising of the sap, it has been ascertained that the sap rises in the tubes thirty-five Ject 

 above the stumps, or about the same height as a column of water equal in weight to the 

 atmosphere. And a French writer, M. DuxRocnET, in a more recent work, states the as- 

 cending force of the sap of a grape-vine, to be sufiicent to rai.se a column of mercury to the 

 of twenty-eight inches 

 the appendix of Dr. Charles T. Jackson's Report upon the Geology of New-Ha 



