PRUNING. 



IptUNING, properly considered, is one of the most important 

 operations connected with the growth and management of 

 trees and plants. That many do not so regard it, we have 

 the most abundant evidence. Orchard pruning, which may 

 be considered the simplest and plainest of all pruning — almost 

 mechanical — is either so unskillfully done in general, or so ne- 

 glected, that we feel safe in saying that the orchards of this 

 country are diminished in value at least one-half. There are many 

 erroneous notions in regard to this as well as other branches 

 of culture, that must be abandoned before we can hope to attain 

 to anything like a complete, profitable, or perfect system. Some 

 rcp-ard pruning as merely a mechanical operation that any man may 

 perform, and that in rare cases only is necessary. Their practice is in 

 perfect keeping with this belief. Others, and among them some who 

 occupy the position of teachers and expounders of the principles and 

 practice of horticulture, speak of it as being merely a superfluous and 

 costly refinement in cultivation, that people of leisure may indulge in 

 for their amusement, but as being quite inconsistent v/ith an economical and profit- 

 able course of culture. It is not a paying operation they say, and therefore it will 

 pay best to let it alone. 



How common it is to hear this argument of " it won't pay," raised against all im- 

 provement. It wont pay to drain, nor to fence, nor to plow deep, nor manure well ; 

 it won't pay to buy good stock at a good price, nor to provide them with good 

 food and shelter and care ; and so this excuse is offered for everything that is miserable 

 in farming. It won't pay, say our city authorities, to make sewers and clean the 

 streets and purify the atmosphere, and so disease is invited to waste the lives and 

 interrupt the business of the people. Occasionally, however, an agriculturist more 

 enlightened, more enterprising and daring than his neighbors, lays aside the popular 

 notion, and drains and trenches and fences ; buys the best breeds of animals, erects 

 them good houses : and he grows rich ; and if not rich, famous, — his name is passed 

 around as a master spirit — a model farmer. So another city, under a more enlight- 

 ened and liberal administration, adopts a thorough system of sewerage, and removes 

 every source of impurity, regardless of the expense or of a clamorous opposition ; and 

 when epidemics prevail, it rejoices in health and uninterrupted prosperity, while death 

 is causing dismay and desolation in others. Then it finds out that it pays to be 

 cleanly. The notion that " it won't pay" to do everything well, is a great error. 



But pruning, some say, is an unnatural operation, 2')ractised or recommended only 

 by certain enthusiastic persons whose zeal has outrun their knowledge. That it is 

 throwing difficulties and expenses in the way of cultivation that ought to be avoided, 

 and that the less we practice it the better. Nature, they say, never prunes, and why 

 should we ? People who talk thus do not know what they say. To be consis' 



.ss:;^: 



March 1, 1853. 



No. III. 



