242 ON THE CANKER IN APPLE TREES. 



specimen, and the proprietor admires his newly made garden 

 or newly introduced trees. In the end of August, when un- 

 pampered or neglected tx-ees are found to have grown only a few 

 inches, and that growth is completed, the fresh-planted pet is 

 busy extending a vegetable tissue, which must never become suf- 

 ficiently solidified, although the shoots have already extended two 

 to three feet. Now, in tender kinds, — and all are tender in de- 

 gree, the extreme points of this late made wood are destroyed by 

 the ensuing winter ; and in the following spring, if unpruned, 

 tlie fabric of the future tree is to be built out of spongy and im- 

 mature materials. Now I would ask, with all deference, whe- 

 ther such a course, persisted in for a generation or two, must not 

 produce serious results of some kind, and those of an accumu- 

 lative character ? 



I consider that the very stocks, intended for grafting, should 

 not be excited by high cultivation in their early days. They 

 should moreovei' — more especially to furnish dwai-f espaliers, or 

 compact trees for the kitchen garden— be removed two or three 

 times at least in their earliest stages. The first of these trans- 

 plantations should begin with the seed-bed. To be sure, it 

 would be a delicate process. What then — other plants re- 

 ceive such care, and why not the apple? The nurseryman 

 would, of course, have to charge a little more for the extra 

 trouble ; but if the principle can be admitted, why, that should 

 hardly raise a dispute. In the dwarfing system, the chief point 

 is to avoid tap roots ; and the preventive system of pruning, as 

 applied by the finger and thumb to the young shoots of forest 

 trees, is equally applicable here. The same kind of system 

 which above ground converts one huge branch into half a dozen, 

 will below ground produce precisely the same effects. 



The sure consequence of such a process, duly carried out, is 

 tlie production of short-jointed and by consequence mature wood. 

 Early fructification is well known to follow in the wake of these 

 matters ; and I have no doubt that by means of rightly constituted 

 soils, — a cessation from all digging over tlie surface, together 

 with a slight top dressing when the heads of tlie tree require it, — 

 that Ijoth durability of constitution, as well as fruitfulness, would 

 be accomplished. In fact, I have proved it a hundred times. 

 In addition to this, how much less trouble in pruning ! Scarcely 

 any more wood is produced in one season than is requisite. Over- 

 cultivation also leads to the necessity of root pruning ; not the 

 root pruning in the stock, or young tree, which has for its object 

 the prevention of a tap root, and the formation of fibrous surface 

 roots ; but that root pruning which is practised in trees of some 

 age, and is the only course left when the tree has been over- 

 excited. 



