ORNAMENTAL PRUNING. 289 



rigid process, it forms, in the estimate of many whose 

 taste is not to be disregarded, a most delightful object. 

 Those who like a more airy, light, and flowing charac- 

 ter of tree, will find it in the Pinus lasiocarpa or woolly- 

 scaled silver fir, common larch, P. monticula, Wey- 

 mouth pine, &c. Pruning, and indeed any culture, is 

 little required in this class, just because the taste is less 

 rigid and exacting, and less required ; and except it be 

 to relieve the tree of any irregular branch that does 

 not conform and harmonise with the general structure 

 to give direction to the leader, or remove dead and dis- 

 eased branches, nothing further is required or should 

 be done. The taste of the third party is most pleased 

 with the cedar of Lebanon, Atlas cedar, common silver 

 fir, araucaria, &c. Pruning here, again, can do little to 

 improve the tree in its points of admiration, as its 

 irregularity constitutes to them its main feature of 

 attraction. Double leaders, however, and such limbs 

 as are liable to split from the tree by winds, lodgments 

 of snow, &c., should so far be pruned as to render the 

 risks less serious. The fourth class are usually most 

 pleased with such trees as the araucaria, common yew, 

 Cupressus Lambertiana, Pinus insignis, and suchlike. 

 Admirers of this class, again, rarely desire to see any 

 pruning done, as with them any. irregularity is a mark 

 of beauty, or at least a point of admiration ; and it has 

 to be admitted that, when beauty or rather delight is 

 seen in an irregular branch, it must be a wrong thing 

 to those whom it pleases to denude the tree of such, 

 and obliterate that feature in the tree which, of all 

 others, affords them most pleasure and delight. Prun- 

 ing may, however, even here be admissible ; for there 

 are few trees so grown that one branch may not over- 

 ride another and gall its bark, or a limb project at 



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