RECOVERY OF ESPALIERS. 95 



or some of the older branches, the tree may be 

 spared for a time. And, further, should the tree 

 be much overgrown with moss, and the soil, whether 

 from bad bottom or want of depth, be evidently 

 unfit for trees of considerable age, the most satis- 

 factory way will be to extirpate all for firewood, 

 and before replanting, to trench the ground much 

 deeper, and raise upon it crops of vegatables for 

 two years, with plenty of manure. 



In the meantime, provide young trees from the 

 nursery, and set them in good ground, that they 

 may advance under a training suitable to their 

 subsequent destination, and they will suffer very 

 little, when they come to be removed, by your 

 own careful lifting and transplanting, compared 

 with the injury which those of an equal advance- 

 ment sustain when taken up in the ordinary way 

 and carried to a distance. But though there be 

 no fault either by age, or canker, or soil, it is no 

 uncommon thing to find espaliers wholly unfit for 

 fruit-bearing, owing to mismanagement alone. You 

 may see that the top branches, which give rise to 

 an annual profusion of young shoots, have been 

 annually cropped in a manner proper to a quickset 

 hedge; and all over the body of the tree, instead 

 of bearing spurs, you will find a multitude of lig- 

 neous knobs, every one yielding its own bundle of 

 brushwood manifesting such a mode of pruning 

 as that practised on English hedgerows, where the 

 design of leaving so many stumps on the stem of 

 the tree is to afford every year a more liberal sup- 

 ply of fuel. 



