OF FRUIT TREES. 8i* 



chinks, so that small insects deposit their eggs and 

 produce their larvae below this bark, it is a good 

 practice entirely to remove it. Of late years, Mr. 

 Knight practised decortication on some old fruit trtis, 

 particularly red-streak apples, and found the new 

 growth thus produced quite surprising, so that the 

 growth of some trees, deprived of their bark in 1801, 

 exceeded in the summer of 1802 the increase of the 

 five preceding years taken together. This method 

 has been adopted in various parts of New England, 

 sometimes with complete success, and again, the re- 

 sult has been the entire destruction of the trees. 

 This failure is attributed, by an iugenious 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 operation. 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. Dr. Holyoke, of Salem, 

 some years since made the experiment on an old 

 pear tree in his yard, that ceased bearing, and restor- 

 ed to it its wonted fecundity. 



Fruit trees are liable to have their bark torn off 

 by field mice, sheep, and various accidents ; to rem- 

 edy which, take some strips of bark from a tree of 

 the same species, about two or thre,e 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 in- 

 serted beneath it to promote the circulation of the 

 *8 



