TO CURE THE BURSTING OF THE CHERRY TREE. 



383 



easily rotted and kroken by the expanding 

 force of the ascending sap of the tree, or 

 thick, strong, and hard to break or rot, ac- 

 cording as the soil is rich or poor ; in other 

 words, according to the vigor of the general 

 growth. If the tree stands on a poor soil, 

 two or three effects will follow. 



1. The corticle will be likely to be thin, 

 corresponding to the rest of the growth. 



2. Being thin, when the crisis of the tree 

 comes, (in which this corticle must burst 

 and die, and the tree pass from a smooth 

 bark to a rough bark tree,) it easily breaks, 

 under the force of the natural pressure, at 

 frequent intervals all around. 



3. In the top of the tree the amount of 

 foliage, and of course of the return sap, will 

 be correspondingly small ; and the force of 

 the downward sap so small, that if the tree 

 stands a year or two, until the corticle dies 

 and partially rots, it will incur no particular 

 danger. 



But on a rich soil, exactly the reverse of 

 all this happens. 



The corticle grows exceedingly thick, 

 tough and strong, and on several of the 

 finer cherries it is like a hemp cord, as any 

 one may see by trying to break a strip, 

 even one inch wide. The top is immensely 

 wide, and full of leaf and return sap. All 

 the internal condition of the tree, both root 

 and top, is such, before the crisis comes, 

 that it would naturally increase the diame- 

 ter of the trunk from one to two inches in 

 a single season if it could ; but the tough, 

 strong corticle holds it fast, and it cannot 

 expand a single hair's breadth. Now if 

 the tree could stand still a year or two, 

 until the corticle should naturally die, and 

 partially rot, it could get along ; but the 

 rich soil below, and the spreading top above, 

 will not allow it. They wish to proceed 

 with their appropriate functions, and they 

 will, until the force of the return sap. 



gorging all the vessels of the trunk, at last 

 bursts out through the corticle by mere me- 

 chanical pressure, or accumulates as dead 

 matter, to ferment on the southern side, 

 and be frozen and torn off by the frosts of 

 winter. 



I should also have said that a poor soil, 

 of course, delays this period of crisis, while 

 a rich one necessarily hastens it ; that is, 

 brings it, with all its immediate exigencies 

 at once upon the tree at an earlier age. 



Such, in general, is my theory. In all 

 probability, those more wise and more skill- 

 ed in such matters, can propose a better 

 and truer one ; and if they do it in your 

 paper, my object will still be fully accom- 

 plished. 



My remedy, of course, would be when 

 the crisis comes, as above indicated. But 

 as a preventive, a poor soil, low culture, 

 and, above all, allowing all the limbs to 

 grow, as nature indicates, from the ground 

 up, so as thereby to increase, as much as 

 possible, the ratio of the surface for the 

 descending sap, as compared with the as- 

 cending current, ought to be recommended. 

 But it may be justly doubted whether, if 

 the tree should be annually headed down, 

 instead of trimmed up, or even if wholly 

 left to nature's own course from the outset, 

 it would not safely pass this crisis and take 

 care of itself, even in the richest soil. But 

 if the knife must be used first in disturbing 

 the natural relations between the trunk and 

 top, so as to give the tree ten or twenty 

 times the amount of length of trunk nature 

 desiofned for it, I think the knife must also 

 be used to afford the needed relief. In 

 other words, if scissors make stays, scis- 

 sors should by all means rip them open 

 again ; at least as soon as disease and de- 

 rangement begin to be apparent. The facts 

 on which this theory is based, I admit, are 

 limited ; and should the experience of 



