53 



must repeat since this gentleman has raised the question, 

 yon will always find a cause, and that cause may be the sum- 

 mer pruning as one item, it may be excessive nitrogenou;> 

 fertilizer in the soil or it may be excessive cultivation. There 

 are a great many reasons for it and it is often very easy to 

 find that cause. But normally the trees should produce a 

 large proportion of their growth not later than the first of 

 July, or anyway not later than the 15th. I have mentioned 

 the first of July being about the time to start this summer 

 pruning, but sometimes in some seasons, when the season is 

 late, that growth may continue up to the middle of July, 

 but it is more often completed by the first week in July. 



MR. U. S. BATP:S of HINGHAM. The speaker hasn't 

 mentioned dehorning of the elderly trees for the purpose oi 

 renovating them, a subject which we have heard discussed 

 here in times past. I had in mind an instance in my own 

 neighborhood where this past season an itinerant tree man, 

 with two assistants, came through the town and persuaded 

 the people it was the proper time in the fall to graft the!:- 

 trees, and it has been estimated that they carried off from 

 .^1,000 to $1,500 at five cents a scion through grafting in the 

 fall. There were old trees and trees twenty years of age. 

 1. began before the first of September and practically de- 

 horned the trees, leaving but a very little growth to carry 

 the buds for another season. Moreover, I used two year 

 old wood as a scion. Perhaps we don't care to broaden the 

 discussion to include grafting, but I would like to have the 

 lecturer's opinion on fall grafting, putting in at least one 

 hundred scions. I know that one of my neighbors employed 

 that man for three trees, and the bill was $20 at five cents a 

 scion, (Laughter). I will say that we examined those 

 trees with considerable interest, and I have within a few 

 weeks seen some of the trees on which the scions were put in 

 as early as the first week in September, and so far as I can 

 see they are almost all alive. Whether they are true to 

 name I have my doubts. That was the case of a stranger 

 coming into a tovni under those circumstances with a very 



