40 GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 



many things in relation to it. It seems that all trees must 

 acquire a certain maturity, either natural or forced, in 

 order to produce blossoms or fruit. A tree that is fur- 

 nished with a rich, humid soil, containing an abundance 

 of watery nutriment, and left in all respects unrestrained 

 in its upward growth, may attain the age of ten or fifteen 

 years before it commences to form fruit-buds ; while in a 

 soil of a different quality, dry and less favorable to rapid 

 growth, or if constrained in its growth by being grafted 

 on some particular stock, or by some particular mode of 

 training, it may produce fruit in two or three years. 



An apple-tree on a common stock, planted out in ordi- 

 nary orchard soil, does not usually bear until it is in most 

 cases seven years old, and often more from the bud ; while 

 the same variety grafted or budded on a Paradise apple 

 stock will produce in two or three years at most. We fre- 

 quently see one branch of a tree that has been accidentally 

 placed in a more horizontal position than the other parts, 

 or that has been tightly compressed with a bandage or 

 something of that sort, bear fruit abundantly, while the 

 erect, unconstrained portion of the tree gives no sign of 

 fruitfulness whatever. As a general thing we find that 

 where there is an abundant and constant supply of sap or 

 nutriment furnished to the roots of trees and conveyed by 

 them through the unrestrained channels which the large 

 cells and porous character of young wood afford, the 

 whole forces of the tree will be spent in the production 

 of new shoots; but that as trees grow older, the cells be- 

 come smaller, and the tree being also more branched the 

 free course of the sap is obstructed, and becomes in con- 

 sequence better elaborated, or in other words more ma- 

 ture^ and commences the production of fruit. Circum- 

 stances similar in all respects to these and answering ex- 

 actly the same purpose, can be produced by art at an 

 early age of the tree ; and this is one of the leading points 

 in the culture and management of garden trees, where 



