SECTION IV. 



409 



that the ingenious author of the Enclycopaedia of Gardening (himself a 

 skilful phytologist) is almost the only writer of note who has ven- 

 tured to cast a doubt on this rash system of pruning, or to observe 

 the vast difficulty and delicacy that attends so scientific an operation. 



" The great importance," says he, " of the leaves of trees must never be 

 lost sight of. In attending to these instructions, their use is not, as Pontey 

 asserts, ' to attract the sap,' but to elaborate it, when propelled to them, 

 and thus form the extract or food taken in by the plant into a fluid 

 analogous to blood, and which is returned, so formed by the leaves, into 

 the inner bark and soft wood. It must he a very nice point, therefore, to 

 determine the quantity of branches or leaves that should he left on each 

 tree ; and if no more are left than what are just necessary, then, in the 

 case of accidents to them from insects, the progress of the tree will be 

 doubly retarded. Experience alone can determine these things. Both 

 Pontey and Sang agree, that ' strength is gained as effectually by a few 

 branches to a head as by many.'" Encyclop. of Gardening, p. 582. It 

 is true, Mr Loudon might not consider his multifarious work as a fit 

 place for controversy : yet no one must know better than himself the 

 utter fallacy of the opinion last mentioned, though propped by the 

 name of another very meritorious nurseryman and planter. Sang ; and 

 that it stands contradicted by the experience of our best phytologists, 

 and our best planters, for more than a century back, from Grew and 

 Miller, down to Boutcher, Knight, and Speedily. No good phytologist 

 will doubt that it is according to sound science, as well as good practice, 

 in woods planted for profi.t, and in a soil and climate which are natural 

 to them, or below that standard, to cut away a small proportion of the 

 weaker branches, and turn the current of the descending sap more 

 abundantly into the stems. Such retrenchment, however, must always he 

 modified by the actual wants of the trees, and the fair proportion which 

 the size of the stem bears to the size and number of the boughs. But to 

 say that " strength of stem is gained as effectually by a few branches 

 to a head as by many," and that therefore many branches may be taken 

 away, is to say, in effect, that strength is not diminished by diminishing 

 the means of obtaining it — a contradiction in terms, wholly unworthy 

 of any serious refutation. 



Perhaps there is no author of the present time who has written more 

 judiciously on the effects produced on wood by means of culture, of 

 which pruning necessarily forms an important part, than the ingenious 

 author of the Encyclopaedia of Gardening : and I feel the more particu- 

 lar satisfaction in appealing to him in this place, as I have above had 

 occasion to differ from him on another point respecting wood. 



" It is remarkable," he observes, " that this subject has never specifi- 



