1871. ] 
SANABLE MEASURES FOR-WALL TREES. 
175 
manure-water, &c., is—weak and often. If too strong, it burns the roots as raw 
spirits the mouth and stomach of a toper. Therefore, the use of stimulating 
liquor requires judgment and discrimination, and all excess of water of any sort 
must be avoided ; for while growth is necessary, so is maturity. To develope the 
former without making careful provision for the latter, would only be preparing 
our trees as helpless victims to be offered in sacrifice to the first frost. 
Special aids to growth are few and less influential. Some would recommend 
dressings of various kinds to the bark, and paddings of damp moss, &c., on bare 
boughs, to make them break afresh more kindly. I cannot speak highly of any 
such expedients. Frequent sprinklings are useful, but these tender stone fruits 
are impatient of a wet jacket night and day. If it does not beget rheumatism in 
their bones, it may open an issue of gum, or establish an incurable cancer, and 
better have a tree sparse of leaves and branches than one infected with such dire 
disease. Gentle sprinkling or moistening the surface of the border will set up 
around the trees a local atmosphere of a genial sort, in which buds will break and 
grow with greater health and strength than if nursed up with adhesive dressings, 
or half-smothered under a wet blanket or layer of moss. 
Scrupulous cleanliness is the next point. Suffer no dust to settle upon, no 
insect to nibble at a green blade of the trees. The branches are few, the leaves 
stunted—both powerful reasons for guarding all there is left to us as the apple of 
our eye. The very appearance of an insect must be prevented, if possible, in such 
seasons as this. It is a singular fact, but so it is, that generally when there is 
least for the pests to eat, more than usual come after it, as if to say, u This tree is 
weak, let us devour, and have done with it.” u The tree is weak, therefore we will 
double guard it against you,” must be the prompt answer of our watchful practice. 
There is another means, and rather an effective one, of promoting the strength of 
weak trees. It is this : to remove every useless leaf or bough. I do not now 
refer to cutting back crippled trees ; that has been already pointed out. But 
here I mean the picking off every curled, blistered, severely punctured, or disabled 
leaf ; these are something worse than cumberers of the tree ; they not only 
hinder other leaves from doing their work, but they draw supplies from the 
general strength of the plant, and worse than waste them. They subvert, as it 
were, the very life and vigour of the tree into a means of its swift destruction. 
Bemove them, and you dry up an open drain on the resources of the plant, and 
turn the flood of life into useful channels. 
I will only specify one more point, and it relates to the number of these 
channels or shoots. In seasons like this, we are sorely tempted to leave an 
excess of wood; having lost so much by winter or spring frosts, we are naturally 
greedy of it; but an excess of wood leads straight to weakness and exhaustion. 
By restricting the number of our shoots, we double the strength of those 
remaining. We do more and better—we reinvigorate the entire tree. For the 
gross strength of a plant consists less in the number than in the individual 
