258 AMERICAN HOME GARDEN. 



stimulated, and annihilation is avoided by a premature, though 

 it may be feeble exertion of the reproductive powers. 



I suppose a similar law to hold in reference to animal life, 

 and that in the human family it may perhaps be taken to ex- 

 plain the remarkable though often impotent precocity of the 

 deformed and dwarfed. It is true, the force and extent of an 

 injury from which this possibility of annihilation arises may 

 be such as to destroy these powers, so that the enfeebled blos- 

 som falls, and leaves no seed or fruit, or so to weaken them that, 

 though the fruit form, it yet drops from the tree imperfect and 

 worthless, but the law appears still to hold, and this is the law 

 of which we take advantage when we would hasten the period 

 of maturity or fruitage in the tree or plant. 



The means and processes by which we call this law into ac- 

 tion for the early or increased production either of flowers or 

 fruit are very numerous and diversified, though they may all 

 be classed as expedients for checking growth. Cramping the 

 roots of plants in pots, with poor soil, or withholding water to 

 an extreme at a certain stage of their growth, as often practiced 

 by successful florists, are of this character. Transplanting 

 also, whether more or less frequent. In young seedling trees 

 of new kinds, the repeated grafting of the tree upon itself, con- 

 tinued from year to year, or grafting it upon the spreading 

 branch of an old bearing tree ; all the processes of dwarfing ; 

 ringing or girdling a limb ; or, which is equally efficient and 

 oftener practiced, the disbarking a large portion of a young or- 

 chard tree with the plow ; or the severe action of insects ; or 

 summer pruning, by which we interfere with the circulation ; 

 setting in shallow and poor soil ; or root pruning, by which we 

 cut off the supply of sap ; or constricting the vessels of a ram- 

 pant limb by bending it ; while the most ancient device known 

 is to " bore a hole in the tree, and drive in an oaken plug." 



Disease also, from whatever cause it may arise, has similar 

 effects, and the sick tree yields fruit, or the sick plant runs up 

 to seed more quickly than its healthful companions. 



In annual or biennial vegetables there is no object to answer 

 in materially hastening maturity. They all bear their seed or 

 fruit in their season. But of the tree, slow in maturing, and 



