800 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
tality of the tree. Persons complain that the thin- 
ning of fruit is expensive and laborious, and this is 
true; but it is a fair question if there is anything 
worth the having of which the same may not be 
said. If the operation pays, then there is no excuse 
for not performing it. It should be considered, also, 
that the fruit must all be picked sooner or later, and 
it really does not cost very much more to pick it 
early in the season than to pick it late; in fact, 
much fruit which is not worth picking in the fall 
might have been eminently worth the labor if the 
trees had been thinned in the early summer. 
There are two general methods of thinning fruits: 
One is a matter of pruning, by means of which the 
superfluous branches, or even the fruit-spurs them- 
selves, are removed; the other is the direct picking 
of the redundant fruits. There is no reason in the 
nature of things why trees should not bear every 
year; but the formation of the fruit-spur is usually 
such as to preclude the production of fruit upon the 
same spur every year. The philosophy of the thin- 
ning of fruit, therefore, is that one spur shall bear 
one year, and another spur the next. This means 
that when fruit is thinned, it should be the object 
to remove it wholly from some spurs in order that 
they may produce fruit-buds for the following year. 
In those regions where certain fruits are systemati- 
eally thinned, the crop is obtained with great uni- 
formity every year. This is especially true of peaches 
along the Michigan lake shore, and in other places 
where this important fruit is well cared for. There 
