AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
39 
in the low, wet bogs of the country, softer than 
that which has been described, of a loose and 
rather watery texture, and shrinking much 
more in cooking. It is sometimes shaped like 
an oblong pear. Its color is a beautiful vermil¬ 
ion. It seems to be much more sensitive, and 
liable to injury by the frost, than the variety 
just described. These varieties are not constant, 
nor are they very perfectly marked, each oc¬ 
casionally having the characteristics of the other. 
Thus the black cranberry sometimes, though 
rarely, assumes an oblong or pear shape, and 
the oblong is sometimes found harder and bet¬ 
ter than it generally is, and of a deeper red. 
The fruit, indeed, assumes every conceivable 
shade and shape, from the black globular, to 
the light and oblong or pear-shaped.— C. L. 
Flint's First Annual Report to Massachusetts 
Board of Agriculture. 
(To b# continued.) 
PRUNING GENERALLY. 
Every shoot which is cut or stopped, every 
bud or leaf that is rubbed off, every wound or 
incision made in the bark, and “ operating” on 
the roots, may be implied and classed under 
this head, and any one may be a general pruner 
without understanding more about the nature 
of pruning than the man in the moon, who, as 
I was taught, was a wicked man indeed, and 
was hung up in the moon, with his axe over his 
shoulder, for cutting trees on the Sabbath-day, 
as a warning to all boys who might be tempted, 
bjr the evil spirit, to cut sticks, fishing-rods, or 
riding-whips, on the seventh day of the week. 
The effects produced by a general pruner 
may be good, or no good, as it happens; but the 
effects produced by pruning on principles are, 
and necessarily must be, as certain as those 
principles are permanent. If any of us prune 
with a view of doing harm to a plant, the effect 
will be as certain as the principle of evil is 
abroad in the world, and so on, with every spe¬ 
cific principle; therefore, it may do some good 
to write, now and then, to remind the world at 
large about the general and specific effects of 
pruning on right principles, if only to lessen 
the chances of doing harm by those who must 
prune away at something or other every year 
of their lives, whether they know the right way 
of pruning different plants or not. There is 
nothing done within the garden, in which a 
man, without practice, is more likely to be led 
astray by loose readings than in the doings of 
the pruner; the very plan that will answer for 
one plant, and cause it to fruit or flower, or 
take to a particular form or shape, may hinder 
the next plant from flowering at all, and put it 
out of shape altogether; therefore it is quite 
certain that the knowledge that would distin¬ 
guish the difference between pruning this plant 
and that plant, can never be known to all per¬ 
sons at the same time ; and on that very account 
serving gardeners will never cease from the face 
of the earth, so that every book called “ Every 
man his own gardener,” or doctor either, is 
just as much as to say, every man has a fool for 
his gardener, or his patient, and as long as 
such books are in the world we must battle on 
to keep down such foolishness. 
The different kinds of pruning are intended 
to produce particular effects on the root of the 
plant. The food of plants is gathered by the 
roots, and sent up to the leaves, to be ehanged 
by them into a matter from which other leaves 
are made, as well as branches, flowers, fruit, 
wood, and all. Therefore, by pruning off more 
or less of the leaves, branches, or roots, we 
have the power of regulating what they pro¬ 
duce, and the regularity of the plant as well. 
This wonderful power should not be intrusted 
to any one who was likely to abuse it from not 
knowing the delicate process by which nature 
regulates the movements of the organs by which 
a plant is formed. The quantity and quality of 
leaves, flowers, fruit, and timber, depend on the 
skill of the pruner fully as much as they do on 
the action of the leaves and branches, and ac¬ 
cording to that skill the quantities and qualities 
are diminished or increased in the same ratio. 
If you were asked to put the whole strength 
of a tree into three particular branches pointed 
out to you, what is more natural, in the absence 
of practical knowledge, than that you would 
prune off all the rest of the branches, as many 
people would do who ought to know better? 
You heard in a lecture, or read in a book—per¬ 
haps from this very pen—that if so many 
branches are cut off from a tree, the sap that 
would be expended in feeding them would go 
to nourish the remaining branches. All this is 
right, and proper; but your application of the 
principle, or rule, may be much worse for your 
tree than no application at all. Suppose that 
your tree had been looking badly for a long 
while, and that after digging round it the looks 
are no better, and the rotten manure makes it 
look worse still; it is, in fact, in soil wdiich does 
not suit it, or the roots have suffered a violent 
check, or the bark has got what we call hide¬ 
bound, and the circulation is languid in conse¬ 
quence. Now, if you apply the favourite rem¬ 
edy for throwing the whole strength of the 
tree into two or three of the branches by cut¬ 
ting off the rest of the branches, the chances 
are that no strength will remain in it to be forced 
this or that way, because pruning cannot alter 
the nature of the soil, or increase the vigor of 
the roots, neither will it loosen the tightness of 
the bark. According to my experience, the 
most confirmed errors among amateur pruners 
lies in this question; they put faith and great 
stress on a thing they do not understand, be¬ 
cause some popular book or writer said that the 
thing is so good in a particular case, or in gen¬ 
eral cases. Quack doctors kill people, as sure 
as ever Dr. Hornbrook did, by the same rule. 
A certain bolus cured a certain individual, or he 
cured of himself, in spite of it, and that bolus 
must be the “ universal medicine” for all comers, 
until the last comer takes the man of pills to 
his long home without ceremony. No ; all the 
pruning in the world will not cure a tree of any 
disease that is of the stint family, or, if it does, 
the tree was not so much stunted as it looked 
to be. 
The only sure and quickest remedy for a 
really stunted tree, be it oak or apple, old or 
young, is to head it down to near the ground, 
or graft, and to give it one more chance to re¬ 
new its strength. Nevertheless, a young tree 
which appears to be stunted by the too much 
exposure of the situation, may, in fact, turn out 
in the end to be in better condition than one of 
the same age and kind that has been too much 
nursed, and is grown too fast in consequence ; 
all the difference depends on the after-manage¬ 
ment. 
A fast man prefers a fast-growing tree to 
cover his walls, or,in its turn, to become so much 
of “ the walls of old England;” but, unless he 
is a good pruner, his [wall-trees soon get bare 
at the bottom by over strength, while the “ walls” 
of England go to the bottom for want of prop¬ 
er strength ; while the slow and sure gardener 
provides for the covering of his allotted spaces 
as his trees advances; and the slow and easy 
forester, who is sure to “ ease her” at the prop¬ 
er time, will cut down the stunted Oak to the 
surface of the ground when it is done with the 
nur.-e, and thus secures a sapling so full of sap, 
from so many roots, that it will neither get hide¬ 
bound by the exposure of the situation, nor 
suffer from the necessary pruning, half so soon 
as the one that was more promising at first to 
an unpractised eye. All this time, the man who 
would not prune or lop off a bough for the 
world, looks upon our men, both fast and slow, as 
next thing to being daft ; but, between the two, 
they so managed at last as to confine him to the 
park, and to the care of the park ranger, where 
he may practise the art of no-pruning until it 
is discovered that a tree may be made into a 
specimen as well as a Tom Thumb. While this 
is being settled, let us, who have neither park 
nor paddock, learn and remember how any tree, 
or shrub, or bush, may best be grown into spec¬ 
imens of their kinds, whether they are to be as 
timber trees in the boundary, or for their looks 
in the front rows or on the grass, or whether 
they are over the fence on the other side, where 
Mr. Errington is looking daggers at us, and 
where we shall call on him when we get all 
around, notwithstanding. 
Now, what is the best standard pattern for a 
timber tree—a Maypole, a broomstick, or the 
leg of a Cochin cockerel, or what? The leg, 
certainly, to begin with, because it is feathered 
to the ground, and also because it is crooked at 
the knee, and they want knee timber in the 
navy ; so we have two main points to begin with. 
They also want straight timber for building, 
and the broom-stick is as straight as can be, but 
the broom head will never do at all, if we as¬ 
pire to a Maypole; and if not, why not, or how 
are you to help it? That is just what I am 
driving at; and if I do not drive to it, and straight 
through it, before I finish, they will never make 
me a royal forester, or give me a cottage near a 
wood. 
Being feathered down to the ground is a good 
beginning for a specimen tree of any kind, but 
in those for timber it is not to be expected al¬ 
ways, the breed having a good deal to do with 
such feathers; and where it is the nature of the 
tree to be low-feathered at first, if it stood still 
for awhile, and moped like a crowing cockerel, 
or like the young oak, as some believed, when it 
started afresh it may have lost the feathering 
principle, and that rather by the force of the 
sap than by the force of circumstances; and we 
are not allowed to choose when a young tree 
darts off on a naked leg, other points being fa¬ 
vorable, or to indulge in the fancy should it 
show the feather. 
After spray and small feathering, it is just as 
natural for a timber tree to make some boughs 
larger than others, as it is for a cock or hen to 
to make tail feathers; and if the larger boughs 
expend that which ought to go for making 
straight timber, as they most would, or if the 
tail feathers lower the fancy value of the birds, 
we must lower the boughs, by stopping them in 
time, for we cannot pull them out as they do 
the feathers. Stopping, therefore, is the very 
first and most essential step in pruning timber 
trees, and many other trees, if not all trees; 
and when a young tree is in full vigor, if the 
leading bud of a larger side-branch is broken 
off at the right time—that is in June or July, 
when the force of the sap is the strongest—it 
will be enough, for the immediate effect of this 
stopping is to direct the force into other buds 
on this branch which might otherwise lie dor¬ 
mant; and while this moving is in progress, 
the force is partly expended in adding to that 
which pushes on the leader at the top of the 
tree; but stopping may be done any day in the 
year, although not so telling at other times. If 
the first side-bud that starts on a stopped branch 
is allowed to go on, and the rest are not allowed 
to go on, but are stopped at different lengths 
to make feathers, or feathery branches, we have 
the first foundation quite sure for a piece of 
knee timber at a future day, and the angle of 
the knee will be according to the angle at which 
it is natural for a side-branch to grow out of a 
main branch of that particular tree; some trees 
throw out their side-branches at sharp, and 
some at flat angles, and others at all angles be¬ 
tween the two; so that in a well-regulated wood 
or forest, all kinds of angles ought to be had for 
the different parts for which knee timber is in 
request. 
Another stopping, and for a very different 
purpose, may be made in April, or any time in 
the spring, in order to husband a scanty supply 
of sap, and to give more time for a newly-trans¬ 
planted tree to make fresh roots before the de¬ 
mand on them increases by the length of day, 
and the greater heat of the sun.— Farmers' Her¬ 
ald. 
-• • «-- 
One of the greatest charms in books is, that 
we see in them that others have suffered what 
we have. 
