134 Thinning Fruit Essential. 
Anderson’s Brush Rake. 
Baling Prunings—There is a fuel value in prunings which 
has become more clear since pumping for irrigation 1s so widely 
practised, but loose prunings are too expensive in handling. T. 
G. Rogers, of Winters, has contrived a “brush baler.” It is a 
large strong saw horse inverted, to which is bolted a long, heavy 
lever. Attached to a cross piece on the lever -are four heavy 
tines bent in a semicircle. The saw horse is filled with brush, 
the lever is then pulled down and fastened by a ratchet brake, 
the brush is forced into a small, compact bundle, and when bound 
with wire makes a bundle easily handled by the fireman. 
THINNING FRUIT. 
Intimately connected with the pruning of bearing trees, is 
the thinning of the fruit or proper spacing of the individual 
fruits so that each shall have space and sap to allow its attain- 
ment of satisfactory marketable size. It has been fully demon- 
strated that no demand is profitable which will be content with 
the undersized fruit from an overladen tree. The superior 
price ior good-sized fruit for all uses, not excluding drying, is 
unquestionable; the total weight secured may be variable as 
between thinned and unthinned trees, but it can be accepted as 
an indisputabie fact that any increase of weight there may be 
upon the unthinned tree will not be nearly an equivalent for the 
loss in value. It is the conclusion of our largest and most suc- 
cessful growers that, large as is the expenditure required for 
careful and systematic thinning of fruit, it is the most directly 
profitable outlay which they have to make for orchard mainte- 
nance. 
Objects in View in Fruit Thinning —But thinning fruit has 
objects beyond the value of the visible crop which it makes prof- 
itable. No overburdened tree can discharge the twofold sum- 
mer duty of every cultivated fruit-bearing tree which is to per- 
fect this season’s fruit and lay a good strong foundation for next 
year’s bearing. If the tree, after fruit gathering, has not the 
