178 THE PRINCIPLES OP PRUNING 



on its general thrift and vigor; but it is safe to 

 say that removing the flowers or very young fruits 

 from a spur or branch tends to cause that part 

 to bear the following year. 



The fact that work is expended in the bearing 

 of fruit may be understood if one examines the 

 swellings on the spurs or fruit- bearing twigs of 

 pears. In Fig. 118, these swellings 

 ( are seen at a a. The scars at the 

 ends show that fruit was borne 

 there. In the transfer of food to 

 this point and the arrest of longi- 

 tudinal growth, a building up of 

 mechanical tissue has taken place ; 

 and it is probable that the long 

 Pear fruit- r wth of the lateral branches 

 buds resulting (which, in this case, bear only leaf- 

 from the re- k u( i s ) has been made possible by the 



moval of fruit. **'-' mi -i 



Natural size excess of nutriment. The reader 

 must not confound these swellings 

 with the thickening due to mere arrest of longi- 

 tudinal growth, as shown in 3, Fig. 61 (which is 

 also mentioned in Section 15). 



Chemical tests show that these swellings (like 

 Fig. 118) are not storage reservoirs of plant -food. 

 My colleague, Mr. A. L. Knisely, has made ex- 

 aminations of these swellings for me, and found 

 that the starch -like contents of the swellings were 

 less than that of vigorous and normal shoots of 

 the same age. In normal twigs, the moisture was 



