PEACH AND APRICOT TREES. 20 



twelve), or the trees are too thickly crowded together. In either 

 case a liberal use of the knife is indispensable in order to keep 

 the aspiring branches within due bounds ; and herein lies another 

 source of injury to the constitution of the tree ; for severe cutting 

 in winter, unless the roots are correspondingly reduced, only 

 induces a stdl more luxuriant crop of spongy summer shoots, 

 which, in the limited growing season usually afforded them in our 

 climate, rarely acquire that degree of solidity necessary to form 

 permanently healthy wood. I quite agree with Mr. Lovell in 

 deprecating the frequent abuse of the knife, but whether that 

 instrument can by any method of management be wholly dispensed 

 with is another question. I think it cannot. Root-pruning in the 

 manner recommended by its advocates is certainly not a con- 

 servative process ; it is rather connected with the radical scheme 

 of " cutting off the supplies." I believe tbe principle to be good, 

 but the way in which it is carried out, judging from the written 

 instructions I have read, seems very closely allied to the antiquated 

 practice of pruning gooseberry-trees with a hedge-shears. A more 

 scientific method of curtailing the roots, I conceive, is to take up 

 and replant the trees occasionally, by which a better opportunity 

 will be afforded of regulating the roots in accordance with the 

 requirements of the branches, of retaining the best and rejecting 

 the worst, and of keeping them within a moderate distance of the 

 surface of the soil. The roots naturally lead us into the border, 

 — a subject of primary importance, but which has been so 

 thoroughly discussed, that it is unnecessary to follow it further in 

 this place. 



It is clear to me, then, that the variableness of the climate, 

 coupled in some cases with a deficiency of attention, chiefly in 

 spring, has more to do with the early decay of our wall Peach-trees 

 than either the unsuitableness of the plum-stock, or the present 

 method of pruning the trees. In confirmation of this opinion, 

 look into our Peach-houses, where an old . tree is not so great a 

 rarity as it is against our walls, and yet in both cases the stocks 

 and the pruning of the young trees are alike. Under glass, 

 however, the tree enjoys a genial climate, and also the further 

 advantage of better general management. There, want of space 

 for the lateral extension of the branches is the greatest detriment 

 the trees have to encounter ; and if at the time of planting they 

 were so arranged, that one tree might, if necessary, eventually 

 occupy the whole area of the roof at eighteen inches or two feet 

 distance from the glass, I see no reason why a Peach-tree, even 



