RAISING APPLE-TREES FROM SEED. 
197 
will be at a loss to supply, but will offer a few observations on the 
means to be employed in order to obtain in a short time the main 
object sought after, viz. the fruit. Here I will not stop to discuss 
the effects produced by grafting, deprivation of nourishment, ringing 
and flexure of the branches, further than to note that as means for 
the furtherance of this object, the two former methods are found as 
far as I know, or can learn from others, to be of no avail whatever 
while the latter unaided by concurrent operations, have but slightly 
superior claims to utility. Throughout the vegetable kingdom it is 
found that there is a certain point or degree of ramification more or 
less in different individual members, removed from the parent stem, 
previous to the attainment of which, a plant is incapable of putting 
forth fruit blossoms; the cause of this it were difficult to explain sa¬ 
tisfactorily, it may be, and indeed has been attempted, but by no 
means with that incontrovertible certainty, that were desirable, and 
as it is not necessarily connected with my present purpose, the fact itself 
being indisputable, I shall not enter on it here; however it is well 
worthy of, consideration, and its perfect elucidation would greatly 
aid in dispelling the darkness which still surrounds, as a well nigh 
impenetrable veil, the vital functions and operations attendant on the 
internal structure of plants, and of which it is the province of vege¬ 
table physiology to treat. Having ascertained the numerical amount 
of this requisite degree of ramification in conjunction with a know¬ 
ledge of the habits of the plants, as to the number of successive 
shoots it protrudes in the course of the year, we may form a pretty 
accurate estimate of the length of time required, before it shall attain 
to a fruit-bearing state. 
Thus, other circumstances remaining the same; the oak, did it not 
send forth two shoots, the one in spring, the other in autumn, would 
be double the long period it now is, ere it began to produce acorns. 
The exact number, however, cannot be ascertained, since all traces 
by which they might be computed are in the older portions of the 
wood entirely lost. It is by earlier inducing this degree in the me¬ 
lon, which is generally the second from the main stem, that the 
pruning or stopping is effective towards the accelerating the emis¬ 
sion of fruit blossoms. 
In the apple, the twelfth, and the pear, the eighteenth, are about 
the minimum number of degrees of ramification distant from the pa¬ 
rent stem that are required ere flowers are put forth ; that period, 
however, is often protracted. In computing these numbers, a shoot 
succeeding after a quiescent period, whether still projected in a line 
with the older wood, or at an angle from it, is equally considered as 
