46 ON THE COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES OF THE 



A year after the second portion of this plantation was pruned, a 

 number of oaks grown under similar conditions, and about the same 

 age (in fact, growing about 500 yards' distance from these), were 

 foreshortened, and a few branches were cautiously from time to time 

 removed from the stem; and these oaks are now worthy of being 

 termed naturally handsome and thriving trees. 



There is yet another instance in which the two methods can be 

 contrasted, namely, in the rearing of trees in a nursery for the pur- 

 pose of planting them out as hedge-rows or in the park. By fore- 

 shortening we get a stout well-proportioned stem, able to over- 

 come the effects of transplanting and withstand the influence of 

 the wind ; while by the other we get a slender, weakly stem that 

 makes but little progress for a few years after being planted out. For 

 example, some years since, when planting a row of lime trees (from 

 6 to 8 feet high) on the side of a drive, we found ourselves short of 

 a sufficient number of home-reared trees, and wrote to a very 

 respectable nurseryman to supply us. He replied, stating that the 

 trees he had of that size were bought in and were barer in the stem 

 than he would have liked, but he could get no other. As soon as 

 they came, we at once saw that they had been very much over- 

 pruned. There were several wounds on their slender stems, scarcely 

 healed over. Seeing this, we planted them very carefully, causing 

 a portion of leaf mould to be mixed with the soil from each pit. 

 Notwithstanding, the home-reared trees that had been foreshortened 

 made more progress the first season than the others did in four, and 

 the latter still have a very bare appearance. 



We come now to compare the advantages of nature's pruning with 

 foreshortening. Some years since a number of articles appeared in 

 the " Scottish Farmer," that were apparently written by a theorist. 

 He denounced pruning totally and vehemently, as unfit to be prac- 

 tised. But notwithstanding all that was then written, it can be 

 easily shown that the actual evils of pruning have originated from 

 the abuse of the practice, and the mistaken use of it, as in the 

 case of excessive close pruning. But bej'ond the overdoing or the 

 undue repetition of foreshortening, all other disadvantages are entirely 

 imaginary. No real bad effects whatever can be fairly chargeable 

 against judicious foreshortening, when conducted on sound prin- 

 ciples, except it be the incidental ones of its affording those who 

 are uninitiated in the first principles, or unpractised in the art of 

 foreshortening, a temptation of overdoing, and thereby maltreating, 

 trees. It is, we think, the enormous mischiefs that have attended 



