OF FRUIT TREES. 6^ 



teen to seventeen inches in circumference, one foot 

 from the ground. This may be considered (the tree 

 being small when set out) as a growth of about two 

 inches a year. The growth in the second experi- 

 ment, for six years, was twelve to fourteen inches, in 

 the holes in which the stones were put, one foot from 

 the ground. Where no stones were put, nine inches 

 was the growth. It will thus be perceived, that the 

 vegetation was most powerful under circumstances by 

 nature least favourable. If, then, thus much can be 

 done to counteract such disadvantages, it surely offers 

 much encouragement to our efforts, and leads us to 

 hope, that not only in this, but in other objects, they 

 may be beneficially extended." 



ORCHARD PRUNING, 



It has been remarked, that the management of or- 

 chards is capable of being reduced to a system, under 

 a few general heads, connected in the principle of 

 making all trees in an orchard healthy, round, large 

 and beautiful. There is no part of this management 

 perhaps, so important, and which requires more skill, 

 and at the same time is so little understood, as the 

 process of orchard pruning. The necessity of com- 

 mencing, and annually repeating this operation in the 

 nursery, has already been inculcated. When this 

 discipline is properly put in practice, at that early 

 period of growth, there will be less employment for 

 the pruning knife at all future periods ; it will never- 

 theless be found indispensably necessary to retrench 

 redundant or superfluous shoots and branches in every 

 successive year of their existence. "To the neglect 

 of pruning fruit trees in due season," says Mr. Yates, 

 "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 inatten- 



