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LXX. On a Method of Improving the Productiveness of Fruit 

 Trees. In a Letter to the Assistant Secretary. By George 

 Henry Noehden, LL. D. F. L. S. $c. 



Read January 7, 1817. 



Dear Sir. 



In communicating to you the translation (see Appendix) 

 of a small tract, which has been sent to our President, from 

 Germany, on a method of improving the productiveness of 

 fruit trees, you will allow me to accompany it with a few. 

 remarks. The author of the tract in question, who is a 

 clergyman in Saxony, founds his proceedings upon the 

 principle, that a certain control, to which the sap in trees 

 may be subjected, will have the effect of producing a greater 

 degree of fruitfulness than would exist, if it were left to its 

 natural course. He did not, indeed, set out with this hypo- 

 thesis, when he made his experiments, but he was, in the 

 process of these, ultimately led to it. He obtains his pur- 

 pose by making annular excisions of the bark, on the 

 branches of fruit trees, or, as he calls it, ringing the branches, 

 that is to say, cutting rings in the bark. The notion, that 

 barrenness in fruit trees arises from too free and strong a 

 flow of the sap, and that, by diminishing and checking this, 

 fruitfulness may be attained, is by no means new, but 

 pretty generally current. It is obvious, therefore, if a mode 

 could be found out of modifying and regulating the sap, that 

 the means would thereby be afforded of rendering almost 



