CLOSE PRUNING FOR THE OPEN AIR. 115 



budding. This is a useful hint to orchard-house 

 pruners who desire beauty of arrangement.) Should 

 a shoot have two of these clusters at its base, then 

 it may be cut down to them very closely. It then 

 presents an excellent basis for the summer work 

 for one of these clusters may have its flower-buds 

 bisected to allow the central wood-bud to extend, 

 and the other cluster may be permitted to bear 

 fruit. (Besides, it generally occurs that, by this 

 close keeping-in of these groups, the latent buds 

 at the point of insertion on the parent branch 

 develope during the summer heat, and thus form 

 an excellent reserve. Let us also remark the de- 

 pendance placed on shoots of Classes 5 and 7 for 

 fruit-bearing. This ought, at least, to teach us, 

 that in the orchard-house, with our climate compa- 

 ratively at command, these two classes can be 

 safely relied on to bear the general crop. Such, 

 at least, is my own experience, and on my old 

 trees hardly anything but these classes appear. 

 This is the end and the result of close pruning.) 

 If at the base of a spur the buds seem unusually 

 latent, and it is difficult to develope them after one 

 season, some even asserting it never to happen, 

 then the shoot of the year which springs from that 

 spur is shortened-in to one good group of triple 

 buds; and at the first May stopping, whatever 

 appearance of fruit there may then be is carefully 

 h 2 



