with a Treatise on the subject. 211 



the information which is necessary to practise the plan suc- 

 cessfully, it relieves us of the duty of collating from the va- 

 rious articles which have appeared, the same information, 

 though in a more diffuse form, and suggested by cultivators 

 whose experience is by no means so extensive as that of Mr. 

 Rivers, who has practised root-pruning six or eight years, 

 with the greatest success, as will be perceived after a perusal 

 of his paper. 



The publication of Mr. Rivers's pamphlet, and the interest 

 he has taken in the subject of root-pruning, has subjected 

 him to the attacks of several writers, who have charged him 

 with claiming the system as one of his own invention — if in- 

 vention it may be called — and they rarely quit the subject with- 

 out referri)ig to its being "old as the hills," &.c. Mr. Rivers, 

 however, does not lay any claim to its originality. Root- 

 pruning, to a certain degree, was practised more than forty 

 years ago: one or two articles have appeared in the earlier 

 volumes of the Gardener''s JMagazine, giving an account of 

 the success of the operation on fruit trees on walls; and Hay- 

 ward hints at the subject, in his Theory of Horlicxdlurc. 

 Mr. Rivers has been, however, the first to carry the system 

 out to its full extent, and to show to the cultivator of trees 

 the great claims it has upon his attention. In this respect, it 

 may be truly called — as it has been, in a ridiculing manner — 

 "Mr. Rivers's system." It loses nothing of its value from 

 having been known forty or fifty years, if, until now, no really 

 useful results have ever been derived from its practice. 



Amputation of a few roots, to check luxuriant growth, is 

 nearly all that has been heretofore recommended. No pre- 

 vious writers, we believe, have adverted to its importance in 

 bringing young trees into an early bearing state, by applying 

 root-pruning to maiden trees in the nursery. It is this part 

 of Mr. Rivers's pamphlet, which gives it its value. It has 

 been a desideratum with all possessors of gardens, to cultivate 

 a variety of fruit trees in a small space. 'Phis they have been 

 unable to do, if standard trees are selected; espaliers have 

 been too expensive, and attended with much trouble; and 

 dwarfs or paradise stocks produce too small a quantity of fruit 

 for general purposes. How, then, shall the object be attain- 

 ed.'' In no way but that recommended by Mr. Rivers. A 

 hundred trees may be cultivated on the root-pruning system, 

 as practised by him, in a space of ten times as many square 



