62 CULTURE AND MANAGEMENT 



will be less employment for the pruning knife at 

 all future periods ; it will nevertheless be found 

 indispensably necessary to retrench redundant or 

 superfluous shoots and branches in every successive 

 year of their existence. " To the neglect of prun- 

 ing fruit trees in due season," says Mr. Fates, " and 

 the unskilful manner of performing it, may, in a, 

 great measure, be ascribed the bad and unfruitful 

 state of some of the orchards in America. This 

 inattention and mismanagement, and, especially, 

 the not amputating dead limbs, and extirpating ail 

 infected parts of fruit trees, subjects them to dis- 

 ease, mortification, and death. An unpruned tree, 

 left in a natural state, will bear fruit sooner than 

 one that is pruned ; for by pruning, the parts below 

 the lopped or amputated branches become vivipa- 

 rous, and produce new leaf buds, which require 

 several years before they will acquire sufficient 

 maturity to generate flower buds, to produce an 

 oviparous progeny; but unpruned trees grow and 

 look irregular and unsightly ; nor is their fruit to 

 be compared to that of trees properly pruned and 

 managed, in order to afford them a more equal ad- 

 vantage of the sun and air, by means whereof they 

 will produce fruit better in size and quality." 



The two great practical errours which have 

 hitherto prevailed, and by which fruit trees have 

 suffered irreparable injury, are, 1. The season of 

 the year; and 2. The awkward and unskilful man- 

 ner in which the operation has been performed. 

 In general, the months of February and March 

 have been considered as the preferable season for 

 pruning, and not unfrequently the executioner is 

 sent into the tree with his exterminating axe, 

 where he commences an almost indiscriminate 

 slaughter, leaving long projecting stumps, and dis- 

 regarding equally the form and beauty of the tree, 

 and the particular branches and spurs upon which 

 the future crop principally depend* In March, 



