December 15. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
201 
neither get hide-hound 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 unprac- 
i tised eye. All this time, the man who would not prune 
! or lop oft’ 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 
j 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 re¬ 
member, how any tree, or shrub, or bush, may best be 
grown into specimens 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 round, notwithstanding. 
Now, what is the best standard pattern tor a timber 
tree—a Maypole, a broom-stick, 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 aiso 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 aspire to a Maypole; 
and if not, why not, or how are you to help it? That 
is just what 1 am driving at; and if 1 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 begin¬ 
ning for a specimen tree of any kind, but in those tor 
timber it is not to be expected always, the breed haying 
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 favourable, 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 
j others, as it is for a cock or hen to make tail feathers ; 
and if the larger boughs expend that which ought to go 
i for making straight timber, as they most would, or it 
the tail feathers lower the fancy value of the birds, we 
| must lower the boughs, by stopping them in time, for 
i we cannot pull them out as they do the feathers. Stop¬ 
ping, 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 vigour, 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 dormant; and while this moving is iu 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 
I grow out of a main branch of that particulai tiee , 
some 'trees throw out their side-branches at sharp, and 
some at flat, angles, and others at all angles between j 
the two ; so that in a well-regulated wood or forest all j 
kinds of angles ought to be had lor the different parts 
for which knee timber is in request. 
Another stopping, and for a very different purpose, j 
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-transplanted tree to make fresh 
roots before the demand on them increases by the length 
of day, and by the greater heat of the sun. 1 once made 
an experiment to see the value of this stopping in 
particular, and everything was in my favour. I re¬ 
moved five Silver Firs from a young thick plantation, 
"rowing on a moist sandy loam ; the trees were not old, 
nor very high, not more than ten feet the highest of 
them. They were removed at the end of March, a bad 
time, to an open, dry, gravelly soil, newly broke up— 
another bad speck—and, as it happened, April was 
more April-like that season than it has been since, 
worse still for the Silvers, as it took them unawares, 
and causing them to move on, go or no go, I forget all 
about the May following, but Mays seldom passed in 
that part of the country, near the east coast, without 
continuous east winds and hot days, the wind often so 
cold as would chill a badger basking in the sun. The 
men were finishing a new walk in that part of the 
garden, and I was trying if all the fastenings ioi the 
newly-planted trees were all right, when it struck me, all 
at once, to try this experiment; and I recollect the cir¬ 
cumstance so well, for the odd expression made by the 
man who went for the step-ladder, on returning to the 
rest at breakfast, thinking I was out of hearing distance- 
lie declared that he “ would be diddled il mastei had 
not been bullfinching all that blessed morning on that 
there tree.” This stopping was the severest on record 
I took off every leading bud all over the branches, and 
left only two buds on the top of the leader, or centre 
stem, also every other prominent bud all over the tiee. 
In this state the tree did not move a bud, except the 
leading one at the top, for five weeks after the other 
trees were in growth; and during that time, the sap 
that would be expended in a fresh growth was so far 
kept in reserve until sufficient strength was gained 
by new rootlets, to force open the more backward 
buds and by that time these new roots had acquired 
such’power as kept up a strong growth for the rest o 
the season; before the middle of July, this tree looked 
far better than any of the other four, and when the 
new top shoots of all of them were measured, the leader 
of this one more than doubled the length of any of the 
others—just fourteen inches, while the longest of the 
•est was only five inches : the latter tells of the severe 
trial they endured by the change. For the next three 
years this tree looked odd, but was in much better 
health than the rest; and, by that time, most of the 
branches gained leading shoots. The oddness consisted 
[ n this—the tiers of branches were rather close all the 
way up, until two years before they were removed, 
when the tiers were made farther apart, and by my 
removing the buds from which the tier of that season 
would have come, there was only one shoot to that tier 
from the second bud left in case one should fail. VV hen 
a full tier was made the following season, the distance 
between it and the one next below it was so out of pro¬ 
portion to all the rest that no one could guess how that 
could be. This opened my eyes a good deal; and my 
practice on all the Firs, Cypresses, and Cedars, was 
very different after that, and to this day I seldom see a 
young Cedar of Lebanon without wishing my fingers 
in the pie with it. . 011,11 
I may as well sav that this took place at Shin bland 
Park ; and that finding a disposition to a bush habit in 
one of the young Cedar of Lebanon trees there, J worked 
