4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRUNING 



but two of which, &, ?, are now dead. That is, 

 two efforts, i, j, out of more than twenty, give 

 promise of being useful. It is noticeable that 

 whereas these two branches terminating at o and 

 at i are of the same age, they have developed 

 in very different size and form. 



Without waiting for the details, we may say 

 that the entire branch in Fig. 1 has made about 

 one hundred and forty attempts at branches. Of 

 these attempts, or buds, twenty -four have pro- 

 duced branches, and of these branches, nine are 

 already dead. The lessons to be derived from 

 this study of the lilac branch may be applied to 

 all plants. They are: (1) there are more efforts 

 at branches than there are branches; (2) there is, 

 therefore, severe struggle for existence; (3) the 

 results are that differences arise and that some 

 branches die. In other words, plants must and 

 do prune themselves. 



DOES PRUNING DEVITALIZE PLANTS?* 



A year ago I read a paper before this Society 

 upon some of the relations between grafting and 

 the vitality of the plant [reprinted in The Nursery- 

 Book, third edition, pp. 82-94] , and it seemed to 

 me that the sum of the argument showed that 

 grafting, while often improperly and injudiciously 

 done, is not of itself a devitalizing or injurious 



*Address before the Peninsula Horticultural Society, January, 1893, 

 and published in the Proceedings of the Society for that year, pp. 43-49, 



