Crce's System of Pnmi?ig Forest Trees. ^51 



however, that Mr. Billlngton's work contains many vakiable 

 remarks on shortening the branches, and divesting them of the 

 buds at the extremities of branches ; and, besides, it is really a 

 work of a practical description, evidently drawn from facts and 

 observations by a practical man. A somewhat similar practice 

 of pruning, by shortening the branches, is, I observe by a para- 

 graph in the last number of this Journal [_Qiiarterly Journal of 

 Agriculture'], practised in France. 



The practice of shortening the branches in pruning has now, 

 it would appear, gained some degree of celebrity. And it has 

 already got a pretty fair share of names, all indicative, more 

 or less, of the nature of the subject ; such as " cutting in," 

 "shortening the branches," "terminal pruning," and others, to 

 which I feel disposed to add what I conceive to be the proper 

 name of my system, "concentrate pruning." It seems there has 

 also been some wranfflinij about the rioht to claim the invention. 

 Since the bantling has passed the critical months of infancy, and 

 turns out to be a promising child, it bids fair for being legiti- 

 mated ; nay, of obtaining a plurality of paternity, a circumstance 

 not very common in the animal kingdom at least. But it is a 

 thing possible, as has been found in circumstances of a similar 

 nature with the case in question, that bantlings of the same 

 class, and differing only, perhaps, in a few shades of lineament, 

 might be produced nearly at the same time in France, in Eng- 

 land, and in Scotland. Granting this to be the case, however, 

 there might still arise a question of some nicety to determine, 

 whether each country may be entitled to claim one for itself, or, 

 if not, which was the first-born one, to claim the legal title of 

 supremacy. 



I have not the vanity nor the ambition to aim at a name, as 

 the founder of any particular system ; neither does my fort lie 

 in polemical writing. My business in life has been, not to work 

 out elaborate systems by the pen, but to work by manual labour 

 the actual operations of pruning itself; and the system, such as 

 it is, had only been communicated to a few friends, and was long 

 confined chiefly within the circles in which the operations them- 

 selves were performed. Of late years, however, my system has 

 become known through a considerable number of the central 

 counties of Scotland ; and, in the year 1823, the thanks of the 

 Directors of the Highland Society were conveyed to me for a 

 paper which I transmitted to them on the subject of pruning. 

 But, besides these, were it a point of any importance to be 

 established, I could show ti'ees which have been pruned in the 

 way I have mentioned, regularly, during a period of upwards of 

 fifteen years ; though many more than I could at the moment 

 claim have been pruned, on the same principle, for a period of 

 nearly thu'ty years. 



