THE PEAR TREE AND ITS PRODUCE. 63 



and, for the sake of beauty and uniformity, they should 

 agree one side with the other. The buds which tend 

 backwards, or which are likely to grow out in front, 

 should be rubbed off, unless much needed where they 

 grow, in which case the shoots may be trained in. 



The spurs on a pear tree should be short and far 

 apart. Long spurs, crowded together, will never pro- 

 duce fine fruit. "Where they are too crowded cut out, 

 and where they are too long shorten them ; but there 

 will be little occasion for this with trees under careful 

 culture. 



There is another summer work for the pear-grower : 

 besides pruning back the young shoots, he must thin 

 out the pears with a continually watchful eye. Nature 

 does the first pear-thinning, when the young pears 

 which fail to shape and swell shrivel and drop off by 

 hundreds. These, when they fall off, generally, unless 

 frost or hail have done a sweeping work of destruction, 

 leave quite as many plump, swelling little nobs of pears 

 as is good for the tree, and plenty of work in thinning 

 besides. 



Avoid beginning to thin the pears too early ; rather 

 wait to see what the spring rains and stormy weather 

 may accomplish in that way; but when the pears swell 

 so as to approach, or in the slightest degree threaten 

 to crowd each other, thin out liberally. The late 

 pears may have more liberal thinning out than those 

 which ripen in the autumn, because the last have to 

 endure the winds and storms of autumn at a time 

 when approaching maturity makes them less firm upon 

 the tree, so that they will to a great extent thin them- 

 selves, and that, if it comes after a very plentiful, arti- 

 ficial thinning, may leave the trees quite too thin of fruit 

 for the time of gathering. In July or August, accord- 

 i'jg to the forwardness of the season, thin Chaumontels 

 to the extent of leaving no more than two to each bunch ; 

 Louise Bonne, and other comparatively early kinds, 

 need not be thinned nearly so much. In thinning, as 

 in all other operations connected with fruit culture, 

 experience and watchful care and observation must 



