MISTAKES IN ORCHARD MANAGEMENT. 
279 
pips, and planted by an old labourer on the estate, and no one knows the 
names of them. Being in very good soil, they are fine trees, but so over- 
crowded that they bear a mass of small fruit every other year. If those 
trees had been well looked after, and had had better varieties grafted on 
them about twenty-five or thirty years ago, the orchard would be worth 
something now. 
Mistakes are easily made in pruning old trees, and a few of them I 
will show. In fig. 150 we have a bit of careless work in the saw- cut, as 
no undercut was made. In cutting big branches the under side should 
Fig. 149 — Unskilled Pkuning to an Inner Bud, and a "Snag" left. 
be sawn first, and then! if the upper cut is made exactly opposite it, there 
is no danger of splitting as this tree has. The man who was responsible 
for this bit -of work afterwards said to his employer : "If I'd knowed as 
how Mr. Ettle wur gwain to phothygraf thic cut, I'd a done he a bit 
different to that." 
In fig. 151 we have another bit of bad work. The branches were sawn 
off too far from the main stem, and partly for this reason, and partly be- 
cause the cuts were not afterwards pared over, the bark gradually died back. 
In time those snags will decay right up and into the trunk, when it will 
be a case like fig. 152, where you can see the woodpecker has been tapping. 
