130 MANAGEMENT OF WALL TREES. 



latter, which is often tlie ease, be half an inch in diameter, 

 the wound, allowing for the angle of the cut, will be of a for- 

 midable character. To proceed : the spring advances, the peach- 

 bud pushes witli vigour, and by tlie close of summer a miniature 

 tree two or three feet in height, with a host of lateral branches, 

 crowns the plum stock. The winter passes : in anticipation of 

 the growing season, the knife is again brought into operation, 

 and a decapitation of the peach takes place, two or three inches 

 above the yet bare wound of the plum stock. Wliy permit such 

 an amount of growth merely for the sake of cutting it away? 

 But I am anticipating. The buds in the remaining portion of 

 the peach of course start into as many shoots, when the season of 

 growth arrives. Supposing the tree not to be sold from the nur- 

 sery at this stage of its progress, the following pruning season sees 

 it once more denuded of its branches by the knife, leaving as 

 many bare and bleeding wounds open to all the varying influences 

 of spring frosts, drying winds, and scorching suns, to say nothing 

 of the disturbance of the general economy* of vegetation in the 

 individual plant. "We will, however, follow the plant to the wall 

 of the kitchen garden. Here again the shoots succumb to the 

 knife, leaving of course more wounds with all their ill effects. 

 The new situation and the stimulants applied for a time give the 

 plant an impetus, and it flourishes. But look at the point of 

 junction of the head and stock, now become an ugly protuber- 

 ance ; gum stands in pellucid drops, telling of wounds inflicted 

 and never_ healed, of debility induced, and constitutional vigour 

 destroyed never to be regained. Years pass on, the bases of the 

 principal branches exhibit ruptures in the bark, and gum exudes. 

 What it foretells need scarcely be recorded. Branch after branch 

 lingers, becomes stagnated in energy — the fruit drops off in 

 stoning. At pruning time a lamentable deficit in the branches 

 appears; unsightly gaps and bare walls tell sad tales. The sequel 

 is soon told. A year or two more of unsatisfactory crops, and 

 you root out the remnant of your peach, or satire on what 

 should have been a healthy, vigorous, and fruitful tree, and put 

 another in its pla,ce only to follow its predecessor to the faggot 

 heap. 



Now why not bud, or in some way produce a union of the 

 cultivated peach upon stocks of its own species ? And let that 

 union be effected at the earliest possible stage of growth in the 

 stock, with the view of rendering as slight as possible the wound 

 caused by heading back. For, after examining many trees in 

 various stages of growth and age, I feel confident that the knife is 

 the 'primary cause of gumming. To discuss the collateral effects of 



* The reader will uuderetaiid the term here used to signify the various 

 phenomena, visible or inferred, of the vital principle of plants. 



