34 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



is for ever loaded with immature wood that earns nothing, and 

 the density of the foliage so completely excludes the light and 

 air from the wood that fruit spurs are few and commonly unpro- 

 ductive. The free bushes that are not pruned at all, or but 

 moderately pruned, are, as a rule, vastly more fruitful than the 

 pyramids, and the free standards are more fruitful than either. 

 Thus, as a matter of fact, the order of fruitfulness is in an 

 inverse ratio to the order of the pruning, and we may conclude 

 that the pruning knife is a deadly enemy to apples and pears. 



The natural growth of a fruit tree is definite and orderly, but 

 much of our practice appears to proceed on the hypothesis that it 

 is a matter of accident. There is sent forth a certain number of 

 long rods. If these are cut back, secondary rods appear, and by 

 stopping these we obtain a lot of soft spray, and so on for ever. 

 But the long rods left to themselves throw out a few side 

 branches and form fruit spurs the greater part of their length. 

 In due time the fruit appears. Often, where the soil and climate 

 favour the business, and the varieties are naturally free-bearing, 

 the fruit may be seen to hang like ropes of onions, while at the 

 same time pruned trees of the self-same sorts are thinly dotted 

 with fruit, so that we can actually count them, which in the 

 other case is impossible. The unpruned standards and bushes 

 are free to follow the course of nature, and we see them fruiting 

 abundantly and frequently, while the pruned trees fruit scantily 

 and seldom. The obvious lesson is that long rods admitting 

 light and air freely are more serviceable than rods systematically 

 cut back, and thereby compelled to become densely furnished, 

 forming compact trees impervious to light and air, as compared 

 with the free trees, that delight to display their fruits in the 

 fullest exposure. The leading shoots, therefore, should never be 

 shortened except for some special reason. 



In the year 1876 I had the honour of reading before the 

 Society of Arts a paper on " Fallacies in Fruit Culture." One 

 of my objects was to demonstrate that systematic pruning and 

 pinching of open ground fruit trees deferred and limited the pro- 

 duction of fruit, although these operations were intended to 

 hasten and augment fruit production. And I placed before the 

 meeting for inspection and criticism a number of trees that I had 

 in the first instance selected for their ugliness, but which, having 

 for some years occupied a good soil in a suitable situation, had 

 acquired symmetry, and proportion, and fruitfulness without aid 

 from the pruning knife, one great point in the matter being 

 that every annual growth had been allowed to acquire maturity, 

 no secondary growth being promoted by summer pinching, and 

 no superabundance of furniture resulting from winter pruning. 

 Some of you will remember that in doing this I exposed myself 

 to what I may now recall as a shower of hot shot ; but I live still, 

 and repeat the story, and if another dose of hot shot is ready for 



