11 
HINTS ON PRUNING ROSES. 
Floriculture, as an art, consists in affording assistance of various kinds to 
nature, whereby her productions may be accommodated, ameliorated, or increased. 
The most common methods of effecting this are by modifying the properties of 
soils, either through the addition or counteraction of nutritive matter. With the 
advancement, however, of mankind in the different branches of information, some 
species of plants have been so elevated and refined, and the superior varieties 
obtained from them are so artificial and precarious, that vigorous pruning has been 
found necessary to preserve them from degeneracy. 
Pruning, as primarily practised, was much more limited in its objects than at 
present. To procure plants in certain peculiar and admired forms, or to prevent 
them from extending over too large a superficies, were evidently its sole original 
ends. As an excitation to the development of flowers, or to fructification, it 
cannot be considered a primitive art. Indeed, it is remarkable, and furnishes a 
pleasing proof of the sufficient adaptation of all created things to fulfil unaided 
their destined proximate purposes, that, in a state of nature, no plant absolutely 
needs pruning to render it prolific. It is only for those pampered hybrids, which 
owe their beauty or value chiefly to the ingenuity of man, that any attention of 
this sort is requisite. 
Of the class last alluded to, there are multitudes which do not come within the 
scope of our work ; nor is it our design to embrace all that do belong strictly to 
Flora's dominions. We have merely selected one of the largest and most ornate 
groups, to point out a few particulars of which all may not be cognizant; impressed, 
by the frequent misapprehension of the proper object of this practice, and the 
consequent vulgar erroneous notions by which it is regulated, with the great 
importance of rightly understanding such a powerfully influential process. We 
will only further premise, as a rule which seems to us infallible and of universal 
application, that, except for any motive of convenience, or in the case of a plant 
which has been greatly improved by careful cultivation, or where the specimen is 
growing in a soil which is too highly nutrimental, no genuine species of tree or 
hardy shrub will be benefited by pruning. 
Cultivators are greatly divided in opinion concerning the period at which roses 
should be pruned, many advocating the dismissal of this operation in the decline 
of the autumn, or about the months of November and December, while a minority 
incline to the belief that spring is the proper season. It would be useless to state 
the arguments of each of these parties in support of their favourite tenet, since we 
take leave to differ from both, and shall briefly justify our conclusion. At eithe 
of these periods, but especially the latter, the sap of plants must be presumed to 
be in constant circulation, although no external indications of this may be apparent. 
