X INTRODUCTION TO FIEST EDITION. 



management of trees was conducted generally in the sim- 

 plest and rudest manner. Whether for the garden or the 

 orchard, they were propagated in the same manner, on 

 the same stocks, and in the same form taken from the 

 nursery, planted out, and left there to assume such forms 

 as nature or accident might impose, and produce fruit at 

 such a time as natural circumstances would admit. 



The art of planting fifty trees on a quarter of an acre 

 of ground, and bringing them into a fruitful state in four 

 or five years at most, was entirely unknown. Small gar- 

 dens were encumbered with tall, unshapely, and unfruitful 

 trees, that afforded no pleasure to the cultivator; and 

 thousands of persons, who are now the most enthusiastic 

 cultivators, were entirely discouraged from the attempt. 



Fruit gardening, properly speaking, may be said to 

 have only commenced. It is no longer a matter of mere 

 utility, but taste also ; and, therefore, adaptation, variety, 

 and beauty are sought for in garden trees, and modes of 

 culture and management. Nothing so distinguishes the 

 taste of modern planting as the partiality for dwarf trees, 

 and the desire to obtain information in regard to their 

 propagation and treatment. 



This has not been anticipated by any of our authors. 

 The standard or orchard system alone is fully treated of, 

 as being the only one practised ; and this requires so little 

 skill in the art of culture, that only the simplest instruc- 

 tions have been given. The very elements of the science 

 have been unexplained and unstudied, and cultivators in 

 the main find themselves both destitute of knowledge in 

 regard to the management of trees in the more refined 

 and artificial forms, and the sources from which to obtain 

 it. But a very small proportion of those engaged or en- 

 gaging in tree culture have studied the physiology of 

 trees in any degree. Very few have the slightest knowl- 

 edge of the modes of growth and bearing of. the different 

 species of fruits, or even of the difference between wood 



