212 PERMANENT PLANTATIONS. 



tive advantages, planters will he able to make a choice 

 adapted to their tastes and circumstances. Those who do 

 not employ a professional gardener, and who have but a 

 small portion of spare time to devote to their garden, 

 should by all means adopt such forms for their trees as 

 require the least skill and labor, provided always that it 

 be appropriate to the size of the garden, and consistent 

 with good management. 

 The next point to be considered is, 



The Age of the Trees. This will depend very much on 

 circumstances. For pyramidal trees it is yet difficult, al- 

 most impossible, to obtain in the nurseries specimens of 

 more than one year's growth that are suitable. The 

 yearlings are never sufficiently cut back, nor the branches 

 of the second and third years so managed as to have the 

 requisite proportion of length and vigor to fit them for 

 being moulded, with any ordinary treatment, into a per- 

 fectly pyramidal form. If suitable trees cannot be found 

 of two or three years from the bud or graft, vigorous 

 yearlings, worked at the ground, should be chosen, as 

 they are in a condition to take easily any required form ; 

 and though fruit may not be soon obtained from them, 

 yet they will, in the end, be much more satisfactory ; for, 

 unless a right beginning be made in the training of a tree 

 in any form more or less artificial, no art can afterwards 

 completely correct the errors. If we take a two or three 

 year old tree, managed in the nursery, as usual, with a 

 naked trunk, two to two and a half feet from the ground, 

 and a branching head, or, what is nearly as bad, a few 

 weak side branches below, overrun with strong ones 

 above, the most severe process will be necessary, in order 

 to produce lateral branches in the proper place ; and thus 

 as much time will be lost as would bring forward a yearling, 

 and the tree will not be so perfectly formed, nor in any 

 respect so satisfactory. The general impatience that ex- 

 ists in regard to the growth and bearing of trees is the 



