676 Pontei/s " Forest Primer" versus 



he fixes at fourteen years, the greater proportion of which, it 

 appears, he was employed in the nursery : while the practice 

 of Mr. Pontey has extended to nearly every county in the 

 kingdom ; and its duration, at the period of the last edition of 

 the Pruner, fell little short of forty years. To prove Mr. 

 Cruickshank guilty of retailing a superannuated dogma re- 

 specting the pruning of fir trees, I need only refer you to 

 Nicol's Planter, published in 1799 (p. 213.), where he says, 

 " it can never be proper to lop the branch of a fir tree by the 

 bole. From the resinous juice which follows the tool, at any 

 season of the year, all wounds become, and continue to be, 

 blemishes." How far such dogmas have been exploded is 

 evident, from the almost universal adoption and beneficial 

 effects of Mr. Pontey's method of pruning. 



Mr. Cruickshank says, " Independently of any other con- 

 sideration, the very form in which a fir grows appears suffi- 

 cient to teach us that pruning, if not attended with actual 

 injury, can at least be productive of no benefit to the tree. 

 An ash or an elm, for example, has a constant tendency, if 

 left to itself, to depart from the shape which constitutes its 

 chief value. It is continually throwing out branches, which 

 become rivals to the leader, and either bend it out of its up- 

 right course, or starve it by exhausting an undue quantity 

 of sap, and thereby disqualifying it for carrying up the tree. 

 Hence the great use of priming trees of this kind is to protect 

 the leader from the rivalship of the other branches, to the end 

 that as much of the nourishment drawn from the earth may be 

 employed in promoting the growth of the stem, and as little of 

 it expended on the top, a part which is comparatively of little 

 value, as is consistent with the laws of vegetation. But, in the 

 case of firs, this use of pruning has no place. Their horizontal 

 branches never interfere with the leader, nor obstruct its pro- 

 gress in the smallest degree. It always, unless broken acci- 

 dentally, or killed by the frost, appears above the most 

 elevated of the horizontal shoots; and they, instead of injuring 

 or supplanting, seem to assist it in keeping its perpendicular 

 position, as those of the same elevation grow of equal length 

 all around it, and produce a perfect equilibrium. Hence it 

 would appear that the pruning of firs, supposing it harmless, 

 can yet be productive of no positive good, so that to practise 

 it would be to labour and lay out money for no end ; a species 

 of industry and expenditure which deserves any epithet but 

 that of rational." 



Pruning ash or elm, it appears, then, by your review, 

 is allowed by Cruickshank, in common with every well in- 

 formed man, to be beneficial; and here may I be allowed to 



