68 QUIKCE 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 

 latitude 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. Eacli 

 contains the 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- 



