PRUNING. 



341 



little ; and as the stem increases, the proportion which the diverging sound 

 knot bears to the straight timber of the stem will be less and less. If 

 trees, when planted together in masses, were pruned in Mr. Cree's manner, 

 there never could be any occasion for lopping ; but as this practice will pro- 

 bably always be more or less required for neglected trees, or for trees in par- 

 ticular circumstances, lopping-in should always be adopted where the value 

 of the timber is an object ; close lopping when the object desired is a clean 

 stem, without reference to timber ; and snag lopping when the object is, as 

 in snag lopping the English elm, to produce a thick growth of young shoots, 

 to be periodically cut off as faggot or fence wood, or for sticking peas. 



767. Cutting down the stem or trunk of a tree to the ground is an import- 

 ant operation, because in some cases, such as that of resinous or needle- leaved 

 trees, it kills the tree, while in others, or what are called trees that stole, 

 which is a property of most broad-leaved trees, it affords the means of renew- 

 ing the tree. Thus coppice woods, which consist of trees and shrubs cut 

 down periodically, have their stems and branches repeatedly renewed from 

 the same root or collar. Thorn hedges are also frequently renewed by 

 cutting down to the ground ; but perhaps the most valuable application of the 

 practice is to young stunted forest trees when finally planted out. The slow 

 growth of a tree which is stunted appears to depend on the thinness of the 

 alburnum, and consequent smallness of its sap channels, the result of which 

 is, that the sap rises slowly and in smaller quantities than it otherwise 

 would do ; and, hence, that a proportionately smaller quantity is returned 

 from the leaves through the bark. But by cutting over the stem just above 

 the collar, the whole force of the sap accumulated in the roots will be em- 

 ployed in the development of some latent buds in the collar, and one of the 

 shoots produced by these buds being selected and the others slipped off, an 

 erect stem will be produced of five or six feet the first season, and the sap 

 vessels in this shoot being large, and abundantly supplied from the root, the 

 plant will grow freely ever afterwards. The cut, which may be made with the 

 pruning knife, or with the large pruning shears, should be made close to the 

 surface of the ground and nearly horizontal, by which it will be more 

 speedily healed over than if made oblique ; and in order to point out the 

 stools or stocks of the plants so cut over in the beginning of summer, when the 

 ground is probably covered with weeds, the stem of every tree may be stuck 

 in within an inch or two of its root-stock. The oak, the ash, the elm, and 

 the sycamore, among timber trees, and the hawthorn among hedge-plants, are 

 greatly benefited by this mode of pruning after they have been three or four 

 years planted out where they are finally to remain. Fruit-trees cannot 

 generally be so treated, because the graft is for the most part only a few 

 inches above the surface of the soil ; but even with fruit-trees, when they 

 are stunted, there is no better mode of restoring them to vigour than by 

 cutting them down to the graft. 



768. Stopping and pinching out. — When the point of a shoot is cut off, or 

 pinched out, while that shoot is in a growing state, it is said to be stopped ; that 

 is, the shoot is prevented from extending in length, and the sap which was 

 before impelled to its growing point is now expended in adding to the large- 

 ness or succulence of the leaves or fruits which may be on the shoot, or in 

 swelling or developing the buds, or in some cases changing them from leaf buds 

 into flower buds. In the case of the young shoots of the fig, stopping occasions 

 -the development of fruit, and Mr. Knight in this way, his plant being kept in 



