ON PRUNING PEAR TREES. 



125 



sterile. The nuts, or rather acorns, are covered, in an unripe 

 state, with clown, and enclosed in an open cup, which on the 

 outside is clothed with coarse scaly hairs. The mountain oak 

 grows invariably in close shaded woods, and seems to be widely 

 dispersed over the country west of the rocky mountains. Some 

 Indian tribes eat the acorns either raw, or make a sort of bread 

 of them. 



On the outskirts of the woods I observed Arbutus procera 

 50 feet high ; a Lauraceous tree with linear light green leaves 

 of nearly the same dimensions ; two species of Ceanothus ; 

 Corylus, No. 85 ; a Spiraea ; Solanum No. 90 ; Zauschneria, 

 No. 97, with scarlet flowers like a Fuchsia; and No. 87. 



XV. — On Pruning Pear Trees. By Mr. Henry Baily, 

 Gardener to His Grace the Archbishop .of York, F.H.S., at 

 Nuneham Park. 



(Communicated October, 1846.) 



A few years ago my attention having been called to the 

 presence of a number of fruit buds at the base of a shoot of a 

 pear-tree which had been accidentally broken in the course of 

 its season of growth (the tree itself being trained upon the plan 

 called Quenouille), and my impression at the time being that it 

 had induced a greater amount of fruitfulness than generally 

 resulted from the plan (usually adopted, and certainly a judicious 

 one) of tying down the young shoots, I was led to make some 

 experiments, the result of which so fully corroborated the just- 

 ness of my first conclusion, that I have since made it a part (and 

 consider it an important feature of my system) of pear culture to 

 twist the young shoots so as to fracture them slightly in the 

 growing season. 



The soil here being a very light gravelly loam, and the pear- 

 tree not succeeding well when worked upon the Quince stock, it 

 became a desideratum with me to devise some mode by which 

 early productiveness might be induced upon the Pear stock. 

 I am now convinced that I have hit upon a mode which (upon 

 this soil) gives me an equivalent for the loss of the Quince, 

 which is well known to bring the varieties which are worked 

 upon it into early bearing. 



It is therefore my practice to go over the trees immediately 

 after midsummer, and with the finger and thumb fracture the 

 young shoots, just breaking their tissue and leaving them hang- 

 ing (they are broken at about four or five buds from their bases) ; 

 this checks their luxuriance without exciting the leaf-buds to 

 push again, which is always a natural consequence of the old 

 mode of pruning out the summer shoots of wall and espalier 



