ORCHARDS. 475 



milking season. If the secreted food is converted into milk 

 and fruit, there can be but little reasonable hope of its adding 

 to the flesh of the animal, or the wood of the vegetable. Erect 

 branches produce most wood buds. Straight limbs produce 

 less fruit than those that are curved or crooked. Whatever 

 retards or diminishes the flow of elaborated sap, in a healthy 

 tree, is favourable to the production of fruit. Hence wall 

 trees, whose limbs are trained in the form of a fan, or in a 

 horizontal direction, bear better fruit than those that grow up- 

 right as standards. Hence young trees are more apt to show 

 blossoms the first and second year after transplanting, than in 

 the two subsequent years. Pomologists have endeavoured to 

 render this law in vegetation subservient to their interests, by 

 adopting artificial means for producing the production of fruit 

 buds. These means consist in ring-barking, transplanting, 

 cutting the roots, training, pruning, &c. The pears in the 

 Caledonian horticultural garden are trained en qucnouille, that 

 is, the lateral branches are cut in to a short distance of the 

 main stem, and kept so, and the fruit is produced on the spurs 

 growing from these short branches. In the horticultural gar- 

 den of London, the limbs of the pear are tied down in a droop- 

 ing position, resembling somewhat in appearance the weeping 

 willow. The vines cultivated at Thomery, celebrated for their 

 superior fruit, are planted eighteen inches apart, trained in the 

 form of a T, the top horizontally, and restricted in their growth 

 to four feet from the main stem. In this way a treillance of 

 eight feet long, and eight feet high, is sufficient for five vines, 

 which produce upon an average 320 bunches of fruit. These 

 modes of training have a common object, that of restricting 

 the growth of wood, and producing an increase of fruit. Those 

 who wish to examine the modes of training here spoken of, in 

 detail, are referred to LOUDON'S Gardener's Magazine. 



Fourth.li/, Leaves are r\s in < ->sary in the economy of vegetation as roots. 

 The sap must be elaborated in these before it can be transmuted into wood, 

 bark, or frnit. A tree cannot thrive, therefore, when these organs are defi- 

 cient or diseased. If sufficient leaves or branches to produce them, are not 

 left to concoct or digest the sap which is propelled from the roots, the tree, to 

 use a modern term, but a just comparison, becomes dyspeptic; the vegetable 

 blood is vitiated, the wood loses its texture, and a stunted growth or prema- 

 ture death generally ensues. Hence great precautions should be used against 

 excessive pruning. 



Fifthly, To prune when the tree bleeds tends to debilitate, by wasting what 

 is designed as food for the tree. I have known it fatal to the vine. What is 

 called bleeding is the flowing of the sap from wounds, before it has been con- 

 verted into aliment. This sap flows must freely while the buds are swelling, 

 and until the leaves are fully capable of discharging their office, as is strongly 

 instanced in the maple, birch, &c. Our orchards are generally pruned in 

 March, which is probably the most unfavourable month in the year for this 

 operation. / 



Sixthly, The advantages of summer pruning are that the tree being then in 

 vigorous growth, the wounds heal speedily; and the sap being concocted and 



