170 GARDEN PLANTS. PART II. 



bore very indifferent. The grafted plants, however, taken from 

 them, produced in other localities, I am assured, abundance 

 of unexceptionable fruit. This circumstance at once suggests 

 the expediency of trying with fruit-trees in this country the 

 method that in like cases has been so successfully carried out 

 in England* The method consists either in biennial transplan- 

 tation practised from the commencement, or in shortening the 

 roots, cutting them back annually so as to confine them within 

 a ball of certain limited dimensions. By this treatment the 

 trees are kept dwarf, and the roots prevented from going down 

 deep into a soil that does not suit them. 



Certain devices are sometimes resorted to in order to render 

 fruit-trees productive, as well as to improve the size and quality 

 of the fruit. Each of these, though varying in the means, seems 

 referable to the same principle, that is to say, the obstruction 

 of the flow of the sap in its descent from a fruit-bearing bough. 

 One long known and practised in Europe is what is called 

 " Kinging." This consists in either binding the stem round 

 tightly with a ring of strong wire, or of removing entirely a 

 ring of bark, about an eighth of an inch in width, so as to lay 

 the wood beneath bare. Two other devices, said to be attended 

 with the same result, I have only heard of as practised in this 

 country : the one consists in punching out here and there on 

 the stem pieces of the bark : and the other which my informant 

 assured me rendered trees of his previously barren immediately 

 fertile consists in driving a large nail into the stem of the tree 

 just below where the branches fork out. 



Bearing upon the same object also, I quote a communica- 

 tion I made some little time ago to the Agri-Horticultural 

 Society :* 



" The following mode of treating the Lichee was communicated 

 to me by Mr. E. Solano, of Shahabad, about a year ago. He told 

 me the result of it was that the stone of the fruit became much 

 lessened, and the pulp consequently much more abundant, and 

 considerably improved in flavour. At any time during the Cold 

 season select a branch that is to "be used afterwards for inarching. 

 Split up carefully somewhat less than a span long. From both 

 halves of the branch thus split scoop out cleanly all the pith ; then 

 bring the split halves together again, and keep them "bandaged till 



* Dec. 19, 1866. 



