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J0UE1SAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



bearing, after which judicious thinning of the top accompanies a mild 

 heading back. When Peach trees grow old, and carry long straggling 

 branches, having a minimum of bearing wood, it is now a common practice 

 to "head in" the large branches to within a couple of feet of the main 

 stem, and thus induce the development of a new crop of young wood. 

 This means the loss of fruit for a year or two, which is more than made up 

 by the invigorated condition of the whole tree. Great injury is wrought 

 to many of our Apple trees by bad pruning — I mean the leaving of a long 

 stub when a branch is removed. These stubs of course rot and carry 

 decay into the heart of the tree, causing splitting and general disaster. 

 But many of our farmers have neither experience nor gardening instincts. 



Trimming, not Pruning. 



Spraying. — Perhaps no horticultural innovation has become an 

 established custom so quickly as this has. The use of Paris green in 

 anything like a general way is practically contemporaneous with the 

 arrival of the potato beetle — about twenty-five years ago. The application 

 of sprays to fruit trees soon followed. The idea of using fungicides, 

 alone or combined with an insecticide, was developed soon after 

 " Bordeaux mixture " was found useful in controlling grape disease by 

 the French vine-growers. Although scarcely fifteen years have elapsed 

 since its general introduction, millions of dollars of capital are now 

 invested in the manufacture of mechanical devices for the efficient and 

 economical distribution of insecticides and fungicides, in orchards and 

 vineyards in the United States and Canada. There are three general 

 types of machines now in use : (1) those worked by hand ; (2) those in 

 which power is derived from revolutions of the wheels of the carriage 

 upon which it is mounted ; (3) those worked by engines or carbonic-acid 

 gas, or compressed air. In all the large orchards the power machines (8) 



