GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF ORCHARDS. 181 



shoots. It is very unwise to allow all the new shoots to 

 grow at random, and, after they have attained a large size, 

 give the tree a severe pruning. The true way to manage 

 such trees is to watch all the young shoots as if each one 

 were a separate tree. After numerous buds have started, 

 let a part be pinched off, while they are so tender that 

 pruning can be done with the thumb-nail. Let such shoots 

 as are to be budded be favored. A person must ascend 

 into the tree-top frequently, to control and regulate the 

 growth of the young shoots. A vast deal of timely care 

 must be exercised to make the young shoots grow properly 

 before they are budded ; then, after the buds have begun 

 to push upward and laterally, that timely care must be con- 

 tinued through the entire growing season. 



The modus operandi of renewing the top of an old ap- 

 ple-tree by grafting is usually performed in two different 

 ways. The first is by grafting the smaller limbs on the 

 extremities of the branches, where they can never become 

 any thing but mere twigs, while the body of the top must 

 ever remain filled with the natural branches ; and the fruit 

 of the new top will appear chiefly at the extreme ends of 

 the boughs, leaving the long, bare, and unsightly arms to 

 annoy and exhaust the tree by its effort to throw out and 

 support its ten thousand suckers. This is the kind of 

 grafting usually practised by most of those itinerants who 

 perambulate the country as professional grafters, who, be- 

 ing too lazy to travel, and being fairly mounted in the tree, 

 set themselves to work, on the logical principle that, the 

 nearer the extremities, the greater the number of branches ; 

 and the larger the number of cions they can set, the more 

 remunerative their job will be. As a rule, such interlopers 

 are very unscrupulous, having no regard for the success 

 o,f their labor further than the development. of the leaves, 

 which is usually the standard by which the pay is regu- 



