226 THE FLORIST AND 
their would-be instructors, no Tvonder this knowledge renders them suspi- 
cious of change. 
Notwithstanding all this, I think we can make very good Pledges, and, 
when the science of the subject is understood, make them superior to any 
thing Europe can produce. We have at least two articles with which to 
make them, which are superior to any of the materials of which foreign 
hedges are made. I allude to the Osage Orange and Honey Locust. The 
former has proved an invaluable boon to the farmers of Illinois and the 
prairie lands generally, where timber is very scarce ; and in England, just 
now, its introduction there is exciting universal attention. 
In starting to make a hedge of either of these, it must not be forgotten 
that they are, both of them, naturally trees ; and as we want them to 
become shrubs, when in the condition of a hedge, we have to resort to pecu- 
liar treatment to make them alter their nature. The object is to check 
their tree-growing, upright tendency, and to make them dwarf and very 
bushy. Now one of the very worst modes of effecting this, is to give them 
severe winter prunings, and little or no attention in the summer season. 
Yet this is the universal practice with those whom I know to have tried 
them. At the time of planting, the plants are cut to within six or nine 
inch-es of the ground, and every succeeding winter, for three or four succes- 
sive years, cut nearly back to where they sprouted from. They generally 
get a shearing in August, after the grain is cut — not sooner ; a few weeds 
are taken out once a year, and that is their course of treatment. 
An experienced physiologist will at once perceive that this practice will 
never make a good hedge out of subjects naturally trees ; but this is not so 
apparent to the "uninitiated." To them it seems one of the most natural 
things in the world, that to make anything bushy, all that is to be done is 
to head it down. But this is only true under certain conditions. 
The first object with hedge trees is to make them shrubs, which must be 
done by some of the known principles of dwarfing. There are three recog- 
nized modes of dwarfing trees, namely, ringing, root-pruning, and summer 
pruning, — the two former being impracticable in such an extensive affair as 
hedging, the last mode is the only available one to this purpose. Summer 
pruning has a remarkable effect on trees, the exact reverse of pruning in 
winter. If a tree is cut down immediately after the fall of the leaf, the next 
season it pushes forth v/ith renewed vigor, determined, as it were, more than 
ever to be the tree nature designed it. So great is this power given to 
it by winter pruning, that if a few successive years of this system were 
persevered in, without any counteracting influence from summer pruning, 
