MAKING FRUIT TREES BEAR 125 



soil by the roots, having no longer a tendency to go 

 to one side rather than the other, will be distributed 

 evenly; and the few buds left intact by the pruning- 

 shears will show a luxuriance of growth in propor- 

 tion to the supply of nourishment placed at their 

 disposal. Thus thorough pruning applied to the 

 whole tree has the effect of giving it new vigor, of 

 rejuvenating it in some measure, or, in other words, 

 of replacing its worn-out branches with vigorous 

 ones. Accordingly when a tree has become ex- 

 hausted by abundant fruit-bearing, it is pruned with- 

 out stint one year in order to restore its vigor of 

 growth. 



"Let us now see what we should do if we had quite 

 the opposite end in view; that is, if we wished to 

 make a tree blossom and bear fruit. Here two prin- 

 ciples will serve us as guides. First, in the fulness 

 of its vigor a tree puts forth long branches and thick 

 foliage, but does not cover itself with blossoms, bear- 

 ing in fact only a few. It is not until it has be- 

 come somewhat enfeebled that it begins to flower in 

 profusion. Secondly, what would in the tree's 

 youthful strength have been a branch-producing bud 

 becomes in its enfeeblement a flower-bud; so that 

 a flower may be regarded as a branch which, instead 

 of developing freely and covering itself with leaves, 

 has remained stunted, thrown back upon itself, for 

 lack of vigor, and has exchanged its leaves for floral 

 organs, — sepals, petals, stamens, pistils. Weaken 

 a tree and you weaken the buds; such, in a word, is 

 the prevailing principle. 



