FRUIT GARDEN. 251 



suckers when stems are wanted ; by seeds alone 

 when new varieties are required ;* by scions when 

 you have to work on old subjects ; and by buds 

 when your trees are young. If intended for dwarfs, 

 bud your plants at two, and if for standards, at four 

 years of age. The spring succeeding this operation 

 is the time for transplanting, which should be done 

 carefully, and in the manner prescribed for setting 

 out apple-trees. The fashion or form of the trees 

 will direct the distance at which they are to stand 

 from each other : between standards this should not 

 be less than thirty feet ;f and between pyramids and 

 espaliers not less than twenty. 



Though in our climate all the varieties of the 

 cherry-tree do well as standards and pyramids, and 

 are, therefore, generally and properly cultivated in 

 these forms, still it may be useful to remark that 

 two of them, the May Duke and the Morello, when 

 trained against walls, give fruit not only of greater 

 precocity, but of much finer flavour ; a circum- 

 stance in which they differ, not only from other va- 

 rieties of their own races y but from fruit-trees of all 

 other kinds. J 



As the cherry grows on small spurs, pushing from 

 the sides and ends of two, three, and four year old 

 wood, and as the procession of new buds is con- 

 stant, it follows, as a general rule, that " the knife 

 must be sparingly employed ;" and as a particular 

 one in relation to wall-trees, that " bearing branches 

 are not to be shortened if room can be found for 

 extending them." These rules, however rigorous- 

 ly executed, must not prevent summer pruning (which, 



* The seeds employed should be taken from ripe fruit, com- 

 mitted promptly to a_bed of sand, and kept in a dry and cool 

 place till the spring, when they may be set oat in rows two and 

 a half feet apart. 



f Millar thinks the distance should be forty feet. 



j Nicol. 



$ Abercrombie's Art of Pruning. 



