OF FRUIT TREES. 81 



has become rough and full of chinks, so that small 

 insects deposit their eggs and produce their larva? 

 below this bark, it is a good practice entirely to re- 

 move it. Of late years, Mr. Knight practised de- 

 cortication on some old fruit trees, particularly red- 

 streak apples, and found the new growth thus pro- 

 duced quite surprising, so that the growth of some 

 trees, deprived of their bark in 1801, exceeded in 

 the summer of 1802 the increase of fhe five pre- 

 ceding years taken together. This method has 

 been adopted in various parts of New England, some- 

 times with complete success, and again, the result 

 has been the entire destruction of the trees. This 

 failure is attributed, by an ingenious writer in the 

 Massachusetts Agricultural Repository, to a want 

 of skill in the operator ; observing, that he has seen 

 a young apple tree in the town of Hallowell, which, 

 on account of some defect, was stripped of its 

 bark about ten years prior to his writing, the 

 longest day of June, and which still lives and bears 

 fruit. Much of its success, it is said, depends on 

 the proper time and manner of performing the ope- 

 ration. It should be done while the tree is in the 

 full flow of sap, about the middle of June, or on 

 the longest day of that month, and the bark should 

 be peeled off entirely smooth to the alburnum. It 

 is scarcely probable, however, that our farmers 

 will be disposed to resort to this troublesome and 

 uncertain expedient, when the milder methods 

 above described will answer every purpose. 



Fruit trees are liable to have their bark torn off 

 by field mice, sheep, and various accidents : to re- 

 medy which, take some strips of bark from a tree 

 of the same species, about two or three inches in 

 width, and place four or five of them, according to 

 the size of the wound, perpendicularly round the 

 naked part. The edges of the torn bark being cut 

 smooth, the sound bark should be a little raised, 

 and the slips inserted beneath it to promote the 

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