23 



lowest, suckers a head may be developed as low as Is desired, and 

 though perhaps at times the suckers will not come where they 

 are wanted, yet in the large majority of cases they will. 

 "Dehorning" may be practiced in the above manner with very 

 little risk of loss. It is only when a man goes into an 

 orchard and blindly and thoughtlessly slashes aroun^with an 

 ax that the dehorning fails; and then strictly speaking, it 

 is not dehorning; it is simply choping down the trees and in 

 that case no one expects them to live. 



In making cuts, the limbs should be sav/ed off as close as 

 possible to the parent branch so as not to leave a stub, ".'i th- 

 in a day or two the ivound should be painted over with some 

 material to keep out rot fungous spores, A good material to use 

 for this purpose is white lead paint to v/hich has been added a 

 little lamp black to give it as nearly as possible the same 

 color as the tree. If very large wounds are necessary to be 

 made it is advisable to repaint them at least once a year until 

 they have entirely healed over. Otherwise rot may get in and 

 destroy the tree. It is essential not to leave a stub because 

 there is no life in it and therefore the wound on the end will 

 never heal over. If stubs are left there are just three alter- 

 natives. One is to keep them painted all the time which is a 

 great bother; another is to ciit them off, which doubles the 

 work of pruning; and the third is to lose the tree, in which 

 case it would have been better never to have begun renovating. 



The opinion of practical grower's seoiiis to be almost un- 

 aminously in favor of scraping down the baipk .when it is very 

 loose and scaly and when the trees are more or less affected with 

 scale, either oyster shell or San Jose, Under the above con- 



