AMERICAN GARDENER. 179 



should be good, and the ground should be fresh- 

 digged and made very fine and smooth before the 

 branches be laid upon it. The earth, laid on, 

 should be from six inches to a foot thick. If the 

 limb, or mother branch, be very stubborn, a little 

 cut on the lower side of it will make it the more 

 easy to be held down. The ground should be 

 kept clean from weeds, and as cool as possible in 

 hot weather. Perhaps rocks or stones (not large) 

 are the best and coolest covering. These layers 

 will be ready to take up and plant out as trees af- 

 ter they have been laid a year. 



279. SUCKERS are, in general, but poor 

 things, whether in the forest, or in the fruit gar- 

 den. They are shoots that come up from the 

 roots, at a distance fromthe stem of the tree, or, 

 at least, they do not come out of that stem. 

 They run to wood and to suckers more than trees 

 do that are raised in any other way. Fruit trees 

 raised from suckers do not bear so abundantly, 

 and such good fruit, as trees raised from cuttings, 

 slips or layers. A sucker is, in fact, a little tree 

 with more or less of root to it, and is, of course, 

 to be treated as a tree . 



280 BUDDING To have fruit trees oy this 

 method, or by that si grafting, you must first have 

 stocks', that is to say, a young tree to bud or 

 graft upon. What are the sorts of stocks proper 

 for the sorts of fruit-trees respectively will be 

 mentioned under the names of the latter. The 

 stock is a young tree of some sort or other, and 

 the bud is put into the bark on the side of this 

 young tree during the summer; and not before 

 the bud be full and plump. The work may ge- 

 nerally be done all through the months of July 

 and August, and, perhaps, later. 



