68 QUINCE CULTURE. 
sap is matured, and as it descends through the bark to 
the roots it deposits the matter which is added to the 
tree ; while the part of the sap not thus expended goes 
into the alburnum, and joins the upward current, com- 
municating powers unknown to the recently absorbed 
fluid. What is thus true in regard to a feeble tree is yet 
more manifest in stronger and older trees. 
To secure all the benefit, the pruning should be done 
in the winter, when there is the greatest amount of 
vitality stored up for use the coming season. In the 
Jatitude where the ground seldom freezes deep, the tree 
continues to absorb food by its rootlets, which is dis- 
tributed over the branches. But when the prunings are 
wanted for cuttings, they will be found that much 
stronger for the same reason. I have never taken off 
cuttings for propagation earlier than December or Janu- 
ary, though I have no doubt of their success when taken 
earlier. 
I can not too strongly recommend a severe pruning of 
feeble young trees, both in the nursery and orchard. If 
we leave only a bud or two, the concentration of vigor may 
restore a healthy growth to the tree, which will continue 
as long as other conditions are favorable. 
4, PRUNING FOR FRUITFULNESS.—The general law 
is, that excessive growth and great fruitfulness can not 
co-exist in the same plant. Accordingly, a number of 
devices are employed to so far change the growth as to 
secure the formation of fruit buds. ‘* The buds of fruit 
trees which produce blossoms, and those which afford 
leaves only, in the spring, do not at all differ from each 
other, in their first stage of organization, as buds. Hach 
contains tlie rudiment of leaves only, which are subse- 
quently transformed into the component parts of the 
blossom, and in some species of the fruit also.” From 
the freaks in Nature’s mode of operation, it is plain that, 
while the various parts of a blossom differ both in ap- 
