FRUIT CULTURE 131 



lizer, gets a crop year after year. It seems to me that when any 

 one comes forward with a proposition Hke Professor Hedrick's, 

 that you cannot get your money back if you apply fertihzers, it 

 is up to them to prove it. (Applause.) 



Mr. Wheeler. Professor Pickett, of Durham, New Hampshire, 

 will now give us a short talk on pruning, especially in reference to 

 fruit trees. Professor Pickett of New Hampshire. 



PRUNING. 



By Professor B. S. Pickett, Durham, N. H. 



Ladies and gentlemen: To attempt to give you anything like a 

 full discussion on the subject of pruning in the few minutes at my 

 disposal, would be impossible, so I will have to confine myself to 

 some one particular phase of it. I must confess that I did not 

 have this particular phase which I will speak on this afternoon 

 picked out for me, but I had an opportunity to choose it myself. 



I am going to confine my remarks to the pruning of fruit trees. 

 Pruning is performed for several different purposes, all under two 

 main heads. One is the shaping of the plant to that shape that 

 the owner desires it. The other is that he may simply regulate 

 its fruit-bearing habits. We have no reasonable excuse for the 

 operation of pruning unless it leads to increased fruit production, 

 or to the improvement of the quality of the fruit which will be pro- 

 duced. The operation of pruning, therefore, gives the shape of 

 the tree which we want; it gives us the branches in the place where 

 the sunlight and air may come to them most suitable for the 

 development and perfection of the variety of the fruit tree which 

 we are pruning. Sometimes we prune with an idea of more or 

 less thinning out or checking the quantity of fruit which is to be 

 borne; but that too comes under the general head of the regulation 

 of the wood which will bear the fruit, regulating it in such a way as 

 to produce fruit of certain sizes or qualities. 



Pruning is an operation, or a series of operations, that depends 

 for its exactness and perfection on many circumstances. We 

 prune the new trees in quite a different way from that in which 



