VI. TRAINING AND PRUNING. 



it has shot to the length of 12 or IS inches, and this will 

 force it to send out every year a set of lateral shoots, 

 and of these you make your election of 3 or 4 to save. 

 At the pruning time, shorten the lateral branches more 

 or less according to the vigour of the tree and the just 

 distribution of sap amongst all the branches. If you 

 wish to raise a branch, prune at an upper bud ; and at a 

 lower bud to lower a branch. If you wish to cause a 

 branch to tend to the right or the left, chuse a bud situ- 

 ated on the right or left side to prune at. In either case 

 to prevent the branch going straight, you have nothing 

 to do but prune a little way above a bud. Thus the 

 training continues ; and, as the lowermost branches are 

 always a year older than the upper, this gradation should 

 be preserved in the length of the branches, which of 

 course, must diminish by stages all the way up, from the 

 base to the summit. This sort of training conduces at 

 once to the fruitfulness and to the duration of the tree. 



$54. THE GOBLET OR CUP FORM is very little other 

 than an espalier, but of which you bring the extre- 

 mities of the two sides round in a circle to meet 

 each other, and to form a large vase or goblet open 

 at the top and tapering down to an inverted cone at 

 bottom. To procure this, prune the young tree so as to 

 have 4 or 5 branches as near to one another as possible 

 at the top of the stem. Manage these principal branches 

 as you do those of the wall-tree ; but rub or cut off all 

 shoots or buds that are putting forth towards the inside 

 of the goblet, as these would soon fill it and destroy the 

 form. The principal branches are brought into form by 

 means of one or two hoops, as occasion requires. 



