650 



PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part III. 



Holkham, under the name o{ foreshortening, and is advocated by Sir Henry Steuart, under that of ter- 

 minal pruning. 



3991. Most erroneous opinions on the subject of pruning resinous trees have been pro- 

 pagated by Sahnon, the experienced manager of the late Duke of Bedford, Pontey, forest- 

 pruner to the same duke, and others of less note. Sang, on the other hand, argues against 

 excessive pruning of the resinous tribe of trees as injurious to the health of the tree and the 

 soundness of its timber. Elles, also, a gardener of scientific acquirements, and extensive 

 experience in England, his native country, and in Scotland and Ireland, would never 

 prune the pine and fir tribe at all, unless when very young, and when the side shoots 

 could be pinched off with the finger and the thumb. At a more advanced age, if com- 

 pelled by circumstances to prune, he would only shorten* the extremities of the fronds. 

 Of two trees, pines, firs, cedars, or larches, the one pruned and the other unpruned, 

 there will be found, he says, most timber in the trunk of the unpruned one, while the 

 branches are so much in addition to the value of the tree. He excepts, of course, those 

 cases in which frondose branches take a ramose character, in consequence of the tree 

 standing alone, as is frequently the case with the cedar of Lebanon, and sometimes with 

 the Scotch pine. 



3992. Our own opinion with respect to pruning the resinous trees is in accord with 

 that of Elles and Cruickshank ; and as to hard and soft wooded leaf trees, we think 

 Cruickshank's practice and rule unexceptionable. We would prune the last description 

 of trees much less than is generally done, and leave the pine and fir tribe in a great 

 measure to nature, taking care, however, to thin betimes and occasionally from infancy 

 till the maturity of the trees. We have no doubt of this, that when the larch and Scotch 

 pine trees planted in the end of the last century, and severely pruned for the first twenty 

 or twenty-five years of the present, shall come to be cut down and sawn up, their timber 

 will be found full of faults, and of very little value, compared with timber of the same 

 sorts from natural and unpruned woods, foreign and domestic. 



3993. With respect to the manner of pruning. Sang observes, ** Where straight timber 

 is the object, both classes in their infancy should be feathered from the bottom upwards, 



keeping the tops light and spiral, something 

 resembling a young larch {fg. 594. a). The 

 proportion of their tops should be gradually 

 diminished, year by year, till about their 

 twentieth year, when they should occupy 

 about a third part of the height of the plant ; 

 that is, if the tree be thirty feet high, the top 

 should be ten feet (6). In all cases in prun- 

 ing off' the branches, tlie utmost care must be 

 taken not to leave any stumps sticking out, 

 but cut them into the quick. It is only by 

 this means that clean timber can be procured 

 for the joiner ; or slightly stemmed trees to 

 please the eye. It is a very general practice 

 to leave snags or stumps (c) : before the bole 

 can be enlarged sufficiently to cover these, 

 many years must elapse ; the stumps in the 

 mean time become rotten ; and tlie conse- 

 quence is, timber which, when sawn up (rf), 

 is only fit for fuel." 



3994. The general seasons of pruning are 

 winter and spring, and for the gean or wild cherry midsummer, as it is found to 

 gum very much at any other season. Pontey says, " As to the proper seasons of 

 pruning, there is only one difficulty ; and that is, discovering the wrong one, or the 

 particular time that trees will bleed. Only two trees have been found which bleed 

 uniformly at certain seasons, namely, the sycamore and fir, which bleed as soon as 

 the sap begins to move." There is, however, one season for pruning unquestionably 

 preferable to all others, as far as the welfare of the tree, and the soundness of its 

 future timber, is concerned. It is well known to physiologists and observing gardeners, 

 that when the sap is returning, wounds heal with the greatest rapidity. Hence, in 

 all plants which are diflBcult to strike from cuttings, the gardener makes choice of the 

 point of a shoot in that particular stage of maturation when the sap is returning ; that 

 is, when the base of the shoot is beginning to assume a ligneous character. This, in 

 hardy trees, is uniformly a week or a fortnight after midsummer, and it will be found 

 that the wounds made by cutting oflP branches at that season, or any time within three 

 weeks after midsummer, will, in the course of four or five weeks, be partly covered with 

 a callosity proceeding from the lips of the wound. Wounds made by cutting branches 

 off" the same trees, five weeks after midsummer, will remain without the slightest indi- 



