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centre of every cluster of fruit spurs there is a wood spur, which, 

 as it extends each season, bursts into blossom and carries the year's 

 crop ; this should be remembered when priming. These spurs will 

 carry fruit for several years. 



Once the cherry tree has commenced to fruit it should, unlike 

 the peach and the apricot, be very sparingly touched with the 

 knife, as it is besides very subject to " gumming." This peculiarity 

 of the plant is aggravated in individuals presenting long stems 

 exposed to the sun, on trees with many forked limbs, and on those 

 which have had large limbs taken off. It is found that by doing 

 all the necessary severe cutting during the summer, and after the 

 crop has been gathered, the wounds heal more readily. Whenever 

 a branch thicker than the size of the finger is cut off it is advisable 

 to apply to the fresh cut a covering of white lead, gum shellac 

 varnish' of hot wax or of clay. 



The Heart and Bigarreau sorts, which are sweet varieties, are 

 luxuriant growers, attaining large size, and possess large drooping 

 leaves. Mazzard stock are preferred for these, the trees being long- 

 lived, larger, and healthy when planted on fairly good loam. 



' The Duke and Morellos classes are slow growing sorts of the 

 sour kind. The first have stiff and erect branches with smaller 

 leaves, thicker and of a darker green colour than the preceding 

 classes ; the second or Kentish Cherries are of a bushy habit, with 

 smaller leaves still and more drooping and more numerous twigs. 

 The branches must be kept far enough apart to admit the sun and 

 air freely amongst them, and the stem and main branches 

 strengthened by cutting hard for several seasons. If the tree grows 

 too luxuriantly, an occasional root pruning will throw it into fruit. 

 They do best on Mahaleb stock, which gives smaller trees, but is 

 more accommodating as regards soil. This stock gums on wet, 

 retentive soil. If it were not for the sprouting habit, sour varieties 

 on their own roots do very well. Cherry trees when shaped for the 

 first few years as a rule keep a good form, and bear well without 

 pruning. 



PRUNING THE FILBERT. 



Suckers should be carefully eradicated every season, and the 

 bushes pruned somewhat after the fashion of the quince, or else 

 they will be a mass of branches, and remain almost barren. Yet 

 the filbert, in the majority of cases, is completely left to itself, 

 although to be fruitful it requires proper and regular pruning. The 

 blossoms, like those of the walnut, are monoecious, i.e., the male 

 flower or catkins, and the female flower are born on the same tree, 

 but from different buds. These fruit buds bear in a cluster at the 

 extremity of small twigs, and are produced on shoots of one year's 

 growth, and bear the next. 



Unless the bushes are pruned, they bear very heavily one year, 

 and remain barren several seasons to recuperate. The mode of 

 pruning consists in cutting back severely the first few years, so as 



