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should not be trimmed off but allowed to remain on the bud until 
it is shed voluntarily. If the leaf-stem or petiole as it is also 
called, is cut too near the bud, fungi frequently gain entrance 
through the wound and destroy the bud. It is possible that the 
leaves can to advantage be trimmed ofif the bud-wood while it 
still remains on the tree, and the bud-wood be used after the 
petioles have dropped and the leaf scars are well healed. It 
appears to be equally satisfactory to push the buds up or down- 
ward. To facilitate the insertion of the bud, it is well to trim 
off the edge of the horizontal cut. In tying the bud, allow the 
remnant of the petiole to stick out between the strands of the 
tape and protect it and the bud from the sun and ram with a 
square piece of wax cloth held in place by one of the strands of 
the tape above the bud. It is essential that the buds should be 
inserted at a point in the stock where the bark is of about the 
same age as the bud-wood, i. e., green and smooth, and the work 
done when the plant is in flush. When the union has been 
effected, which will be in the course of two or three weeks, the 
stock should be pruned off about six inches above the bud. The 
buds are sometimes very dilatory about starting, and in order to 
force them out the plants should, after the buds have taken, fre- 
quently be gone over and all adventive buds rubbed ofif. 
In top-working old seedling trees the same principle obtains. 
Part of the main branches are then pruned off to one to two feet 
from the trunk and the resulting sprouts are budded and treated 
in the manner already described. As the buds increase in size the 
native top is gradually removed ; care should be taken, however, 
not to prune the tree too severely at one time, as it is then apt to 
become permanently injured and die from such treatment. 
In, to some extent, employing another method called by the 
originator ‘‘slice-budding” matured bud-wood sufiflciently old to 
have turned brownish or grayish, is also used in top-working 
seedling trees planted at stake. The back of the part of the stock 
