a The Principles of Fruit-growing. 
but before they have become of sufficient size to be 
a tax upon the tree. Peaches are generally thinned 
when they are about the size of a small hickory nut 
(that is, about the size of the end of one’s thumb), 
and apples are thinned from that size until they are 
twice or sometimes even thrice as large. Various 
devices have been suggested for the thinning of fruit, 
but they are all impracticable, because they do not 
discriminate between good and poor fruit, because 
they do not leave the fruit well distributed over the 
branches, and because they are very likely to break 
off the spurs. Some of the implements figured in 
Chapter VIII. may be used in special cases. It 
really requires more discrimination and judgment to 
thin fruit properly than it does to pick it. In the 
thinning of peaches it is a good rule to allow none 
of the fruits to hang closer than four or six inches 
of each other. This means that in years of very 
heavy setting, fully two-thirds of all the fruits are 
to be picked off in June. In many parts of the 
eountry this thinning is systematically done, and it 
has in all such eases come to be regarded as an 
indispensable element in successful fruit-growing. No 
reliable estimates of the cost of thinning fruit can be 
given, because so much depends upon ‘the form and 
pruning of the tree and the amount of fruit to he 
removed. The result is also greatly influenced hy the 
character of the workmen and the price paid for labor. 
Full grown peach trees may he thinned for 15 to 50 
cents cach. Apple trees twenty-five and thirty years 
old have been well thinned for 30 to 80 cents each. 
