NOVEMBER. 
323 
may you will find old trees generally full of old long spurs, with 
ten times more buds than are necessary for a good crop of fruit, 
and so crowded that scarcely any sun and air can get to them. 
The flowers are in general small and the greater portion of them 
imperfect. When allowed to expand they rob the trees of their 
powers, and even of those that set a great quantity not unfre- 
quently drop oflf. Spur-pruning is, therefore, a work of the first 
importance. 
When the spurs are crowded, all the longest and weakest should 
be cut clear away ; and on those that are left the buds should be 
well thinned out; all the weak buds and those on the ends of the 
spurs should be cut clean off, leaving the roundest and most plump, 
and taking particular care of those at the base of the spurs. When 
pruned the buds should be left at such a distance from each other 
that the sun and air should have full influence on them. On old 
trees that have been neglected, spur-pruning can hardly be too 
freely carried out. We have ourselves operated largely on old 
trees of all kinds a few years ago. Since then the trees have 
regained fresh vigour, and they bear much finer fruit than they did 
previously. Some apple trees here were so exhausted by over¬ 
bearing and by profuseness of flowering, that the fruit—when 
there happened to be any—was wretchedly poor and malformed. 
But since they have been regularly and properly spur-pruned, the 
fruit has been all that could be wished for. 
It may be here objected to what we have said, that to carry out 
spur-pruning properly in large gardens and orchards, necessitates 
a great amount of labour. Our answer to this is, that where trees 
have beenne glected it requires considerable labour to bring them 
into a proper condition, but when once got into this state, the 
labour yearly required to keep them so is not very great. It is 
quite lamentable to see the neglected state of orchard trees in 
general, and too often of garden trees also, crowded to excess with 
wood and spurs ; one year an excessively heavy crop, the following 
year none at all ; and so it goes on, year after year. The fruit 
never attains its proper size or quality, and tire trees in time 
become so enfeebled that the fruit produced is almost worthless. 
When the fruit crops fail people generally blame the seasons, not 
their own bad management. They say our springs are so pre¬ 
carious that it is almost hopeless to expect a good cro23 of fruit—a 
very great fallacy, by the way. If fruit trees are j^roperly managed 
from the time they are planted, by timely thinning of shoots, 
pruning of the spurs, thinning of fruit, never over-bearing, &c., 
there is an almost certainty of getting a fruit croj) iu_ nine seasons 
out of ten, excepting such extraordinary seasons as the last. We 
do not say that spring frosts will not destroy the fruit blossoms; 
but we do fearlessly assert that trees that have been w^ell managed, 
and whose buds will in general, owing to the amount of light and 
air they receive, be bold, round, prominent, and plump, will bear 
more fruit and of better quality, on an average of years, than trees 
full of wood and spurs. Many of the flowers of the latter will, in 
Y 2 
