RINGING. »71 



must, therefore, be less abundantly supplied with moisture, and 

 drought in such cases always operates very powerfully in 

 accelerating maturity. When the branch is small, or the space 

 from which the bark has been taken off is considerable, it 

 almost always operates ia excess; a morbid state of early 

 maturity is induced and the fruit is worthless. 



"If this -view of the effects of partial decortication, or 

 ringing, be a just one, it follows that much of the success of the 

 operation must be dependent, upon the selection of proper 

 seasons, and upon the mode of performing it being well adapted 

 to the object of the operator. If that be the production of 

 blossoms, or the means of making the blossoms set more 

 freely, the ring of bark should be taken off early in the 

 summer preceding the period at which blossoms are required ; 

 but if the enlargement and more early maturity of the fruit be 

 the objects, the operation should be delayed tiU the bark will 

 readily part from the alburnum in the spring. The breadth 

 of the decorticated space must be adapted to the size of the 

 branch; but I have iiever witnessed any except injurious 

 effects, whenever the experiment has been made upon very 

 small or very young branches, for such become debilitated and 

 sickly, long before the fruit can acquire a proper state of 

 maturity." 



It appears from, the following case, among others, that permanent 

 ringing is not always speedily injurious. It is recorded in the Gardeners^ 

 Chronicle (1842, p. 70*7) that a Mr. Dawson of Tottenham had a Jargo- 

 nelle Pear-tree, which he planted against the gable end of a coach- 

 house, and consequently trained higher than it could be on an ordinary 

 garden-wall. One of the principal limbs, at a little more than a foot 

 from its junction with the main stem, was cankered, three inches of 

 its length on one side, and for more than six inches on the other. The 

 part affected was about an inch and a half thick one way, by three- 

 fourths of an inch the other. Above and below the wound, the circum- 

 ference was about six inches. There was not the least bark or young wood 

 connecting the upper and lower parts of the branch, the diseased part 

 being black and the wood extremely hard. Nevertheless this branch 

 produced every year an abundant crop, invariably about a fortnight 

 earlier than the rest of the tree. The fruit was not equal to that grown 

 on the other branches, but it ripened earlier. Excepting fruit-spurs, 

 this branch had not made an inch of wood during the last four years, 



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