146 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



might have been indited by the legitimate owner of a bramble. I remember 

 one editor nailed the question, triumphantly, by saying that wheat could not 

 produce chess, because it belonged to a different class of vegetables, as if 

 Linnaeus or somebody else, by writing about it, could impair the native 

 powers of the plant. I should like to know when everybody became possessed 

 of this secret, or whether the term everybody includes the whilom editors of 

 agricultural papers." 



RENOVATING OLD ORCHARDS — PRUNING. 



Solon Robinson. — I rise to ask a question. I want to know whether I 

 shall cut away all the drooping branches of an old apple tree — the limbs 

 that hang from the under branches, and some of fehem almost to the ground. 

 Some say that such limbs should be shaved off — that is, all that fall at 

 the extremities of the branches — below the level of the plane of their 

 insertion into the body of the tree. Others say that these drooping limbs 

 should only be cut away where they are in the way of cultivators of the 

 soil under the trees. 



Wm. Lawton. — I have often observed that those drooping lim^bs are the 

 most liable to be attacked by insects, and that they have less fruit in pro- 

 portion than the upper and more upright branches. 



Andrew S. FulUer. — If a branch is bent below a level, it will produce 

 more fruit than those above the level, if they are not too much in the shade. 

 If those drooping limbs are sound and healthy, and the sun can reach them, 

 I would not cut them away. The French horticulturists distort the limbs, 

 and bend them down, to make them productive. In pruning, I would 

 always cover the wound with grafting was, made cf the following ingredi- 

 ents : One pound of rosin, half a pound of beeswax, and a quarter of a 

 pound of tallow. This is the composition of the old style of grafting wax, 

 and none that I have ever tried is better. I would spread this upon cloth, 

 and cover all wounds made in pruning, particularly all large limbs, and 

 small ones too, unless pruned at a time when wounds heal readily. 



John G. Bergen.^Much pruning is done too early. In the Summer, all 

 small limbs cut off will heal without covering the wounds, and none should 

 be cut at any other time — say in the month of June. 



Judge Meigs. — I have seen an apple tree in June, completely denuded, 

 and it lived and made new bark. We have one case on record, where a 

 malicious person stripped an orchard, and it rather benefited it. This was 

 in midsummer. 



BUDDING. 



Mr. Fuller. — I stripped a linden tree, eight feet of the body, when 

 in full leaf, and it did not hurt it. There is no fixed time for bud- 

 ding I have succeeded well in October. It depends altogether upon 

 the condition of the stock. No author can give direction when to bud 

 trees ; it must be done at a particular growth of the stock, and they vary 

 mostly in point of time. The books say bud roses in August. Yet, if 

 you will, get buds from green-houses and insert in stocks in open ground. 



