THE FAILURE OF ORCHARDS, AND ITS REMEDY. 205 



duty of grafting their fruit-trees. Not so, however, in some 

 parts of the West and South, where, we are informed, the 

 speculation is in full blast. It is but just to say, in this 

 connection, that there are honest men engaged in this busi- 

 ness of grafting men in all respects worthy of confidence 

 and the service they render to fruit-culture is very great. 

 What we have said will be no detriment to them ; for they 

 have characters to sustain them and to inspire confidence. 



The remedy for this source of injury to an orchard is 

 when trees are to be grafted to procure cions from thrifty, 

 bearing trees, during the winter, and let the grafting be 

 performed by some intelligent person who understands 

 something of the science of pruning fruit-trees. 



Want of proper Pruning constitutes a prominent cause of 

 failure in the productiveness of many apple-trees. When 

 some kinds of apple-trees are permitted to grow ad libitum, 

 as if branch-extension were the great desideratum, and ex- 

 pend all their forces in the production of wood-growth, they 

 can produce little or no fruit. Indeed, it is not possible for 

 any tree to perfect a fruit-germ, and not again in some way 

 disorganize it, unless the wood-growth shall cease in time 

 for the leaves to elaborate a sufficient quantity of plant- 

 food to grow both leaf and fruit the following year, or until 

 a part of the leaves shall attain to nearly or quite their full 

 size. That this is so, will be apparent when we consider 

 that the leaves which first appear in the spring were form- 

 ed in the buds the previous year, perfect in all their parts, 

 and in the embryo state contained each individual cell 

 found in them when fully grown. As growth begins in 

 the spring, the small cells which were formed in the previ- 

 ous year begin to expand. Each individual cell thus en- 

 larges, until all the cells of which these leaves are composed 

 have attained full size. Here, for example, is a tree in 

 possession of a full-grown leaf. This leaf did not form it- 



