222 GARDENING. 



year, thin the plants to the distance of a foot from 

 each other. Such of them as are intended for graft- 

 ing or budding may remain in the nursery till these 

 operations have been performed ; but those cultiva- 

 ted with a view to new races should be transplant- 

 ed, and in rows ten feet apart every way.* Left to 

 themselves, they may be slow in producing fruit ; a 

 circumstance which has engaged artists in a search 

 after means which should bestow upon them an ar- 

 tificial precocity. These divide themselves into two 

 classes : such as operate exclusively on the soil, and 

 such as apply directly to the plant. If the young 

 tree abound in leaves, branches, and suckers, with 

 a bark green, smooth, and shining, the remedy will 

 consist in removing from its roots a portion of the 

 original earth, and substituting for it a soil contain- 

 ing less vegetable food; such as sand, gravel, or 

 schist, &c. If, on the other hand, the tree be 

 small arid weak, having little foliage arid few branch- 

 es, and a bark rough, (dry, and spotted, there is rea- 

 son to suspect that its want of fertility is occasion- 

 ed by a want of nourishment, and we must hasten, 

 by reversing the management just laid down, to give 

 it an additional supply of food. As belonging to the 

 second class of means, we may enumerate partial 

 decortication, piercing, wiring, grafting, pegging, cut- 

 ting a portion of the roots, &c., but all depending on 

 the same principle, " the obstruction, in a greater 

 or less degree, of the descending sap." Of these, 

 the first (which has got the name of ringing) is the 

 most ancient and best recommended. The Romans 

 were well acquainted with it,f and Du Hamel revi- 

 ved its use in France about the year 1733,J whence 

 it extended itself to Holland and Germany.^ The 



* Encyclopaedia of Gardening, 

 t Virgil and Columella. 



j Memoires de L'Academie des Sciences, 1788. 

 $ Works of Dederich and Diel. Darwin's Phytologia de- 

 . scribes and explains it, yet. it was considered as a new discovery 



