. PRUNING DISPUTE. 97 



Should the bearing spurs seem to have contracted, 

 from old age, a hardness that is incompatible with 



wood has grown deep around it. Hence, it may be contended, the 

 origin of cavities so frequent in the heart of old timber. The 

 other method is not to amputate near the stem, but to mutilate 

 the branch that ought to give way, so as to check its growth but 

 leave the life in it; and the fault of this method is, that the suc- 

 cessive layers of new wood, desposited year after year, are every 

 one marred by this stump, which continues its cross grain through 

 them all, making a bad knot in every plank, and must either pro- 

 long this mischief for fifty years, or be cut off some time, and 

 cause the evil complained of in the former method, cr it must 

 decay, and allow the successive layers to grow around a decayed 

 substance, proving a worse danger, by leaving outwardly a hole, 

 and inwardly a tube for conveying wet. The evil of the cross 

 stump is well seen in firs whose branches fall of their own ac- 

 cord, not without leaving a host of ragged remains, which though 

 dead last a long time, and show in the subsequent sawing of the 

 timber, as it were, the transverse perforations which they have 

 made in every deal that is cut; the perforations are indeed fitted 

 with a knob or plug, but the plug, though neatly fitted, is so in- 

 differently fixed, that it may often be pushed out with the thumK 

 Such are the two methods of pruning, together with the fault of 

 each. The last is by much the worse, unless the first cause rot- 

 ting. Let some proprietor of old trees cut down one, of which he 

 knows the very spot whence a large branch was amputated some 

 ten or twenty years before, and after taking off a slab opposite the 

 ancient wound, let the plane be applied, proceeding, under his own 

 eye, by hairbreadths, till the vertical grain be separated from those 

 that meet the plane at right angles this being the exact seat of 

 the supposed disease. The last shaving will be worth gold, as it 

 will finish the controversy, determine the rules of a delightful 

 science, and give, as the author expects, a victory to Scotland 

 over the English, who are enemies to the first mode described, and 

 which obtains in the north. The experiment ought to be made 

 with respect to wounds that have been anointed, and to such as 

 have not. It would be interesting to see the paint in the middle 

 of the shaving. But apart from all experiment, two things are 

 clear: first, that by pruning in clue time, no branch thicker than 



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