FRUITS AND FLOWERS. 315 



the last year's wood, but upon the new wood this may be done 

 from the 25th of July to the 10th of August. Vines treated in 

 this manner produce fruit nearly twice its usual size, when 

 girdled nearly or quite an inch in width. The shoot thus 

 operated upon dies, of course, the following winter. But 

 where a ring is taken of only one-half an inch, the fruit grows 

 larger ; but the bark coming together before the winter, a 

 connection is made, and the shoots are seemingly not injured. 

 This process was recommended by President Knight of the 

 London Horticultural Society, in 1823. We have practiced 

 it for five years, producing bunches of nearly one pound in 

 weight. 



This theory clearly shows the folly of cutting off leaves under 

 the mistaken notion of admitting light to the fruit, and 

 denuding the vines almost entirely, as some ignorant persons 

 do with grapes and melons. In plants the leaves act as lungs 

 in animals. Mcintosh says, " that the preservation of the 

 leaves on vines, as indeed of all other trees and plants, is of vast 

 importance — indeed so much so that the removal of a single leaf 

 tends to lessen the vigor and energy of the tree." The practice 

 of cutting off the tops of corn stalks as soon as the grain is 

 glazed is still followed notwithstanding the loss of weight in the 

 grain being more than the value of tlie stalks. If vegetable 

 physiology was more generally understood and believed, that 

 the leaves performed the same part in plants as the lungs or 

 stomach in animals, by exposing the crude sap to the atmosphere, 

 parting with oxygen, and secreting carbon, returning the fluid 

 back to the whole system of the plant, the reason why the tops 

 of corn stalks are, and must be useful in ripening the seeds, 

 would be understood. The wood and fruit of trees and vegeta- 

 bles are matured by the returning sap after it is elaborated by 

 the leaves. If it is not so, how is it, that when a variety of 

 fruit is ingrafted upon a wilding, it will produce fruit like 

 the tree from which the scion was taken, and never from the 

 stock on which it is worked ? Mr. Knight maintains that 

 the sap of trees ascends in the alburnum or sap-wood, where 

 it makes its first deposit of new wood. This theory led to 

 many experiments. Mr, Williams applied it to the early 

 maturation or ripening of grapes ; he found by taking off 

 one-quarter of an inch of the bark in width, that the sap was 



