32 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



branches, and where I cut them on the southerly side, or more 

 to the southwest, the bark afterwards withered and came off 

 in several cases nearly down to the ground, which I could not 

 attribute to an^^thing else but to the cutting of those limbs, 

 while on the other sides of the same trees no injury resulted. 



Mr. Pope. I wish to know, if from the places where you 

 cut those limbs the sap ran down during the summer? 



Answer. I think not. 



Alfred Smith of Monmouth. I think Mr. Sawyer is 

 risfht in thinkino: tliat the trouble in his case resulted from 

 cutting the limbs and not from the sun. In cutting a limb, 

 especially if the water gets into it, it begins to die at a certain 

 point. I think I never saw the white wood of an apple tree 

 bleed at any time of the year. If it did I could not make the 

 wax stick in grafting. Every one knows that if a limb is cut 

 from a tree which is black-hearted, and the wound covered 

 with wax, the water which exudes will run down and cause a 

 black spot on the tree or limb, but I never have learned that 

 that bhick injured the tree. I have often rul)bed it off and 

 found good l)ark beneath. It is only a coloring matter that 

 you see, which comes from rotten wood and not from the 

 white wood. 



Charles Foster. I have been somewhat in the habit of 

 working orchards in different places in the county of Kennebec, 

 some five or six towns. I never remember of finding a single 

 scald on the north side of a tree, or the under side of a limb. 

 For the last seven or eight years I have been in the habit of 

 setting trees with a cant towards the gouth and southwest. 

 I have followed grafting for thirty years, more or less, and I 

 do not remember of seeing the sap run out of a single apple- 

 tree limb of white wood. In grafting there is danger of 

 cutting off too much of the top at one time. I have generally 

 been two years in trimming and grafting a tree and fitting it 

 for bearing. 



The President. Do you prefer grafting the branches or 

 the main stock? 



