242 AMERICAN HOME GARDEN. 



is therefore plain that we may take our choice of low or high 

 trees, tall or short stems. The general practice has been to 

 set out trees with tall stems, or trim them up tall afterward, 

 Fig. 118 a. This perhaps may have arisen from the too preva- 

 lent habit of suffering cattle to run in our young orchards, 

 which is as outrageous as it would be to stable them in our 

 parlors. It is difficult to change habits, even after the reason 

 for their formation has passed away ; but it is clear that or- 

 chard trees with short stems, say four or five feet high, are, on 

 many accounts, more desirable than tall ones. (See Fig. 118 

 b.) They are much more readily pruned, the fruit is more ea- 

 sily gathered, and thus much labor saved. A certain farmer, 

 scarcely yet in middle life, has an orchard of sixty russeting 

 apples, grafted and planted by himself when a boy, which 

 yielded in 1856 some six hundred barrels of fruit, half of 

 which could be gathered without bench or ladder by a man of 

 ordinary height standing upon the ground. 



Fruit is not so readily blown off from low trees as high ones, 

 and when it falls is less injured for use or market. The main 

 stem of a short tree is also less exposed to injury from the sun 

 and from late spring frost, the latter sometimes bursting the 

 vessels in which the heat of the former has caused the circula- 

 tion to start. 



Insects do not so readily select a tree partially shaded as a 

 place of deposit for their eggs, instinct telling them that they 

 need the sun to hatch them. 



Shorter stems for orchard trees, and higher fences for or- 

 chards, will be found decided improvements. 



Very low-stemmed trees, or " dwarfs," are sometimes pruned 

 into a pyramidal, or, rather, conical shape, by suffering all the 

 young side shoots to grow, and nipping their extremities, short- 

 ening also the main shoot or leader, Fig. 118 c; or, with the 

 same general form, a drooping habit is given to the young tree 

 by tying downward the points of the young branches, Fig. 118 

 d ; and these and other fancies may be pursued to any extent. 



