126 FRUIT BOOK. 



the leaves is abstracted, such fruit, tie the sum- 

 mer what it may, will never ripen. 



" (4.) Therefore, if a necessity exist for tak- 

 ing off a part of the leaves of a tree, a part of 

 its fruit should also be destroyed. 



" (5.) But although a tree may be able to 

 ripen all the fruit which it shows, yet such fruit 

 will neither be so large nor so sweet, under 

 equal circumstances, as if a part of it is removed ; 

 because a tree only forms a certain amount of 

 secretions, and if those secretions are divided 

 among twenty fruits instead of ten, each fruit 

 will, in the former case, have but half the amount 

 of nutrition which it would have received in the 

 latter case. 



" (6.) The period of ripening in fruit will be 

 accelerated by an abundant foliage, and retarded 

 by a scanty foliage." 



" Dr. Lindley stated, that he considered these 

 propositions as the expression of general truths, 

 applicable to all cases, but especially to the vine. 

 If they were founded, as he believed, in well-as- 

 certained laws, then the vigorous summer prun- 

 ing of the vine is totally wrong. He recom- 

 mended, on the contrary, that not only should 

 the whole crop of leaves be unpruned, but that 

 the lateral shoots, always hitherto removed, 

 should be allowed to remain, because all those 

 laterals, if allowed to grow, would, by the end 

 of the season, have contributed somewhat to the 

 matter stored in the stem for the nutrition of the 

 fruit; because the preparation of such matter 

 would have been much more rapid, and because 

 the ripening of the fruit, which depends on the 

 presence of such matter, would have been in 



