252 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



dead bark or dirt ; but when it is smooth and has no scurf 

 it is more liable to suffer. Trees should not be washed in 

 dry and icarm weather. The best time is just before spring 

 rains, or before any rain. 



2. Where fruit-trees are found to have suffered from the 

 winter, pruning cannot be too early, and hardly too severe. 

 If left to grow, the heat of spring days ferments the sap 

 and spreads blight throughout the tree ; whereas, by severe 

 cutting, there is a chance, at least, of removing much of the 

 injured wood. We have gone over the pear-trees in our 

 own garden, and wherever the least affection has been dis 

 covered, we have cut out every particle of the last sum 

 mer s wood; and cut back until we reached sound and 

 healthy wood, pith and bark. 



SLITTING THE BARK OF TREES. 



THIS is a practice very much followed by fruit-raisers. 

 Downing gives his sanction to it. Mr. Pell (N. Y.), famous 

 for his orchards, includes it as a part of his system of 

 orchard cultivation. Men talk of trees being bark-bound, 

 etc., and let out the bark on the same principle, we sup 

 pose, as mothers do the pantaloons of growing boys. We 

 confess a prejudice against this letting out of the tucks in 

 a tree s clothes. We do not say that there may not be 

 cases of diseased trees in which, as a remedial process, tins 

 may be wise ; but we should as soon think of slitting the 

 skin on a boy s legs, or on a calf s or colt s, as a regular 

 part of a plan of rearing them, as to slash the bark of sound 

 and healthy trees. Bark-bound! what is that ? Does the 

 inside of a tree grow faster than the outside ? When bark 

 is slit, is it looser around the whole trunk than before ? 

 When granulations have filled up this artificial channel, is 

 not the bark just as tight as it was before ? Mark, we do 



