THE CULTURE OF PLANTS 



root is sufficiently able to nurse and bear ; neither 

 be rash in loping them, except they be already top- 

 heavy, which brings crookedness ; if so, cut at a 

 crooked place, slanting upwards, clean and smooth, 

 and train up the straightest shoot again to be the 

 tree ; or rather if you can save its head by thinning, 

 viz. cut the under-side thus at mid-summer, and slit 

 the bark in the spring, so may it grow straight and 

 taper. Purge still the head when needful, and prune 

 superfluities ; cut off all that cross, rub, fret, and gall 

 one another. Permit not trees to fork; train them 

 with one straight and taper body, and a handsome, 

 round, pyramidicalhead. And when you prune, cut 

 close and smooth by the body or bough with the 

 knife, or chissell and mell ; or, if the branch be great, 

 cut with a saw, nicking it first underneath, and 

 smooth it with the chissell, so will it the better heal. 

 But if the tree be very old, and the branches great, 

 such will never be able to overgrow the wound ; 

 therefore if you must cut such, do it at a little dis- 

 tance from the body, the wound declining to the 

 horizon. Thus train pines, firrs, pitch, and these of 

 the conical tribe in stories only, which methode they 

 naturally follow ; you may cut out some of the great- 

 est branches of the under storie, but so as you leave 



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