By the Rev. William Williamson. 151 



quantity of fruit in some one year : but we find that a regular 

 crop in succession is thereby prevented, and that too, for seve- 

 ral years. In order to ensure fruit every year, I have usually 

 left a large proportion of those shoots, which from their 

 strength, I suspected would not be so productive of blossom 

 buds, as the shorter ones ; leaving them more in a state of 

 nature than is commonly done ; not pruning them so closely, 

 as to weaken the trees by excessive bearing, nor leaving them 

 so entirely to their natural growth, as to cause their annual 

 productiveness to be destroyed by a superfluity of wood. 

 These shoots, in the spring of the year, I have usually short- 

 ened to a blossom bud, for the reason before given. 



The great art of pruning is to produce the greatest quan- 

 tity of fruit, without injury to the crop of the succeeding 

 year, which, in my opinion, is not done by the Kentish me- 

 thod. But by observing the rule which I have laid down, 

 though the trees do not perhaps bear so great a weight in any 

 one year, as by the method before detailed ; yet the crops 

 in the whole certainly are not less : with this great advan- 

 tage both to the public and private grower, that a moderate 

 but regular crop is ensured in every successive year. I 

 think that by this plan the average weight in the whole 

 will be greater. The year 1819 was a very productive one, 

 and I grew two hundred weight of Filberts (weighed when 

 gathered) upon fifty -seven trees, the greater part of which 

 were not above six years old, (reckoning from the time 

 of their being cut down), and growing upon three hundred 

 and sixty square yards of ground ; which is after the rate 

 of twenty-seven hundred weight per acre, and upon part 

 of the ground ten more trees are now planted, which, if they 

 had come to a bearing state, would have increased the 



