430 APPENDIX. 



cut down, as before. The hedge should be pruned once a year only ; 

 and the only suitable time for pruning deciduous plants is as soon 

 as the buds have swollen in spring ; and as for evergreens, as soon 

 as vegetation has fairly commenced. In pruning, use no shears, 

 but only a sharp bill attached to a long handle, striking upwards, 

 and giving to the hedge its desired form, exclusively by the eye ; 

 lowering the top a little at each annual pruning, and endeavoring 

 to give to the hedge the form of a very steep roof, which form is 

 ever to be preserved. Thus trained in the form of the quenouille, 

 or distaff, as the hedge increases in height, so also it increases in 

 breadth, all the branches experiencing in an equal degree the bene- 

 fit of the sun and air, the falling rains and the dews ; it retains forever 

 all its branches quite to the ground, standing impervious, like a 

 pyramid on its base. Yet this is not the case where the sides of the 

 hedge are pruned vertically ; as, in this last case, the upper limbs, 

 receiving, as they must, the chief and almost exclusive benefit of the 

 sun and air, and falling rains and dews, they become the superior, 

 and the lower limbs inevitably perish. 



DEEP TILLAGE. 



Owing to our remarkably transparent atmosphere, the sun, in our 

 latitude, from its exalted elevation during summer, shines with pe- 

 culiar brightness and intense heat ; and droughts, which often and 

 suddenly penetrate far below the limits of all ordinary cultivation, 

 are of frequent occurrence. At such times, the trees and plants 

 cease to grow, or become scorched with withering heat, and a pause 

 in vegetation ensues, the best part of the summer being lost. The ob- 

 vious and easy preventive remedy is deep tillage ; or the earth must 

 be loosened to the depth of at least eighteen or twenty inches, with 

 the subsoil plough, and the operation repeated at intervals of three or 

 four years, until the whole earth to this depth becomes of the same 

 uniform fertility. The subsoil plough is of Scotch invention. It is 

 formed of great strength, and chiefly of iron, without the mould- 

 board, and with a wing on each side. It is drawn usually by four 

 oxen or horses, and follows in the bottom of a deep furrow, formed 

 with the common plough. The subsoil plough serves admirably to 

 stir and to loosen the subsoil to this extraordinary depth, without re- 

 moving it from its place, or bringing the sterile earth to the surface. 

 Thus broken or pulverized, the rains and the dews sink down, 

 being readily absorbed, together with a due proportion of the richest 

 juices of the manure ; and the roots of trees and of plants now 

 strike root downwards, deep into the soil, below the influence of all 

 but very extraordinary droughts ; where, finding permanent re- 

 sources of nourishment, their growth continues uninterrupted and 

 perpetual during the whole season. 



