32 
PRUNING. 
with a new layer of bark. Many compositions have been in 
fashion, abroad, for this purpose, which, under our summer sun 
and wintry frosts, are nearly worthless, as they generally crack 
and fall off in a single year. The following is a cheap and 
admirable application, which we recommend to all cultivators 
of fruit trees. 
Composition for wounds made in pruning. Take a quart of 
alcohol and dissolve in it as much gum shellac as will make a 
liquid of the consistence of paint. Apply this to the wound 
with a common painter’s brush ; always paring the wound 
smoothly first with the knife. The liquid becomes perfectly hard, 
adheres closely, excludes the air perfectly, and is affected by no 
changes of weather ; while at the same time its thinness offers 
no resistance to the lip of new bark that gradually closes over 
the wound. If the composition is kept in a well corked bottle, 
sufficiently wide mouthed to admit the brush, it will always be 
ready for use and suited to the want of the moment. 
2. Pruning to induce fruitfulness. 
When a young fruit tree is too luxuriant, employing alt its 
energies in making vigorous shoots, but forming few or no blos- 
som buds, and producing no fruit, we have it in our power by 
different modes of pruning to lessen this over-luxuriance, and 
force it to expend its energies in fruit-bearing. The most direct 
and successful mode of doing this is by pruning the roots, a pro- 
ceeding recently brought into very successful practice by Euro- 
pean gardeners. 
Root pruning has the effect of at once cutting off a consider- 
able supply of the nourishment formerly afforded by the roots of 
a tree. The leaves, losing part of their usual food, are neither 
able to grow as rapidly as before, nor to use all the nutritious 
matter already in the branches ; the branches therefore become 
more stunted in their growth, the organizable matter accumu- 
lates, and fruit buds are directly formed. The energies of the 
tree are no longer entirely carried off in growth, and the return- 
ing sap is employed in producing fruit buds for the next year. 
Root pruning should be performed in autumn or winter, and 
it usually consists in laying bare the roots and cutting off 
smoothly at a distance of a few feet from the trunk, (in propor- 
tion to the size of the tree) the principal roots. Mr. Rivers, an 
English nurseryman of celebrity, who has practised this mode 
with great success, digs a trench early in November, eighteen 
inches deep, round his trees to be root pruned, cutting off the 
roots with a sharp spade. By following this practice every 
year, he not only throws his trees into early bearing, but forces 
Apples, Pears, and the like, grafted on their own roots, to be- 
come prolific dwarfs, growing only six feet apart, trained in a 
