346 TREES. 



cross-bows. The trees start into leaf, and all promises well; but 

 unless under very favorable circumstances, the leaves beggar the 

 roots, by their demands for more sap, before August is half over. 



We mean to be understood, therefore, that we think it safest in 

 practice, in this part of the world, when you are about to plant a 

 tree deprived of part of its roots, to reduce the branches a little 

 below this same proportion. To reduce them to precisely an equal 

 proportion, would preserve the balance, if the ground about the 

 roots could be kept uniformly moist. But, with the chances of its 

 becoming partially dry at times, you must guard against the leaves 

 flagging, by diminishing their number at the first start. As every 

 leaf and branch, made after growth fairly commences, will be accom- 

 panied simultaneously by new roots, the same will then be provided 

 for as a matter of course. 



The neatest way of reducing the top of a tree, in order not to 

 destroy its natural symmetry,* is to shorten-back the young growth 

 of the previous season. We know a most successful planter who 

 always, under all circumstances, shortens-back the previous year's 

 wood, on transplanting, to one bud ; that is, he cuts off the whole 

 summer's growth down to a good plump bud, just above the pre- 

 vious year's wood. But this is not always necessary. A few inches 

 (where the growth has been a foot or more) will usually be all that 

 is necessary. It is only necessary to watch the growth of a trans- 

 planted tree, treated in this way, with one of the same kind un- 

 pruned; to compare the clean, vigorous new shoots, that will be 

 made the first season by the former, with the slender and feeble 

 ones of the latter, to be perfectly convinced of the value of the 

 practice of shortening-in transplanted trees. 



The necessity of a proper supply of food for trees, is a point 

 that we should not have to insist upon, if starving trees had the 

 power of crying out, like starving pigs. Unluckily, they have not ; 

 and, therefore, inhuman and ignorant cultivators will feed their 

 cattle, and let their orchards starve to death. Now it is perfectly 

 demonstrable, to a man who has the use of his eyes, that a tree can 



* Cutting off large branches at random, often quite spoils the natural 

 habit oi a tree. Shortening-back, all over the head, does not affect it in the 

 least 



