JAN.] 



THE ORCHARD. 



59 



I am not an advocate for much doctoring with old decayed or sickly 

 tree, but the reverse; therefore recommend as the most preferable 

 way to replace such with young healthy trees, so soon as they show 

 strong symptoms of decay. Whenever you meet with a tree, the 

 fruit of which you esteem, propagate it immediately whilst in health, 

 by budding or grafting, &c. ; and if it should afterwards get into a 

 declined state, replace it with one of the same, or some other good 

 kind. Never propagate from a sickly tree if you can well avoid it, 

 for its disorder will be carried with the buds or grafts, and in all pro- 

 bability will ultimately work their destruction. 



For the method of propagating fruit-trees, &c., by budding or in- 

 oculation, see the Nursery in July. 



GOOD AND BAD PRUNING OF FOREST-TREES. 



The annexed wood-cuts will explain the effects of judicious and 

 injudicious pruning better than a lengthened disquisition. Fig. 8 

 represents a tree of thirty years' growth, which has been regularly 

 and properly pruned. Fig. 9, a tree of the same age, which has been 

 neglected as to pruning during its early growth, and has now been 

 pruned in a way too frequently practised namely, by sawing and 

 lopping off the branches^ after they have attained a large size. Fig. 

 10 shows the bad consequences of neglecting early pruning, in the 



Fig. 8. 



Fig. 10. 



case of a plank cut from an ash-tree which had been pruned by lop- 

 ping off the large branches many years before it was felled. The cuts 

 in this case had been made several inches from the bole, and the 

 branches being very large, the stumps left had become rotten. The 

 enlargement of the trunk had not, however, been stopped, for the 

 new wood had covered over all the haggled parts, in some places to 



