134 



THE APPLE VULTURIST. 



Fig. 61. 



without injury to the machine. In case a branch is not 

 entirely severed with one stroke, the chisel, being detached 

 from the piston, remains at the point to which it was driven 

 at each stroke, until through, when the spring withdraws it. 

 By employing a long handle, such a device will be found 

 convenient for cutting off twigs, shortening-in branches, 

 thinning out tree-tops, clipping off cions, cutting out cater- 

 pillars' nests, pruning all kinds of berry-bushes and grape- 

 vines, and gathering choice specimens of fruit from high 

 branches. 



Training Fan-shaped Heads. One of the most beautiful 

 forms for training the tops of apple-trees, is to train the 



branches in the 

 form of a fan, like 

 Fig. 61, which 

 represents one of 

 a number of ap- 

 ple-trees trained 

 in this manner 

 by an amateur 

 pomologist living 

 on Long Island, 

 whose trees, at 

 the present writ- 

 ing, are about 

 twelve feet high, 

 and fourteen feet 

 broad. The gen- 

 tleman stated to us that he entertained the conviction 

 that those trees are not so productive as they would 

 have been, growing in the same places, if the heads had 

 been allowed to assume their natural form. But there 

 were no satisfactory grounds for holding such a belief, 

 as those fan-shaped trees were quite as productive as 



A fan-shaped apple-tree. 



