THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, July 3, 1860. 
213 
in this genus, Ho also read descriptions of uevr Hymenoptera 
from New Holland and New Zealand. 
Dr. Wallace read some observations on the question of the 
indigenousness of certain Lepidoptera, especially Sphingid®, oc¬ 
casionally taken in this country. 
PRUNING. 
Pruning may be defined to be the removal of a branch, or 
branches, of a tree, to facilitate the accomplishment of some 
particular object which the cultivator has in view. As an art, it 
is most generally applied to fruit-bearing trees or shrubs, and the 
gardener who is not skilled in this practice can never rank high 
in his profession. By its excessive use shoots too gross are pro- 
duced, and the most excessive luxuriance is induced. One of its 
objects is to regulate the form assumed by a tree. Training does 
much in tliis way; but the knife is used to obtain the skeleton 
form. It behoves every one who intends practising this art, to 
attain a certain amount of physiological knowledge; and having 
this much, practice only can make an expert pruner. 
It is quite amusing to witness the sympathy between the head 
and hands of an expert pruner; to mark how he foresees what is 
necessary to be done, and the results which will follow, and to 
observe the rapidity with which his hands wield the pruning- 
knife. To get a correct knowledge of the use of the knife, every 
young gardener ought to pass at least two seasons in a first-rate 
nursery. To commence with the grafting, trimming up stocks, 
budding, removing the clay and tying, and afterwards thinning 
the shoots of fruit trees, and training them in. This amount of 
probation may seem excessive to many of our younger friends; 
but it is, I opine, quite necessary to lay the basis upon which to 
build up the superstructure of good gardening. It was my fate 
to have been thus treated myself. When I was a mere boy I 
was sent to the then famous nursery of Lee, the father of the 
present proprietor of the Vineyard, with instructions that I should 
not be pushed on too rapidly, but that I should begin at the 
bottom and go through every detail of the profession. I went, 
therefore, after leaving a boarding school at Christmas, early in 
the ensuing season to this place, about the middle of March, and, 
oh! I shall never forget one sharp frosty morning being sent to 
clay grafts. There were four of us. The first, a very clever 
knifeman, putting on the grafts like lightning ; the second, quite 
an adept at tying; the third, my unhappy self, with hands 
embedded in wet clay, and quite unable to warm them by friction; 
and the fourth, a person with a pot of warm wood ashes, who 
patted round and finished off the mass of clay which I had put 
on, and who added much to my annoyance in a waggish manner, 
by constantly exciting me to work, saying to me, “ Come young 
man, now pray get on, and allow me to progress,” until at length 
I could not resist giving vent to a flood of tears brought on by 
j acute agony in my hands, and irritation of my temper. Thus I 
went through every detail of the business; and in the summer 
found myself in clover—tying buds, and such-like amusements, 
j being my only occupation. 
Since that time I have reflected “ many a time and oft,” upon 
i this incident, and have ever felt a debt of gratitude to that 
j: judicious friend at whose suggestion I was placed in this un¬ 
enviable position. 
I am, I feel, losing sight of my theme by this digression, which 
I have introduced to show how important it is to be well and 
thoroughly grounded in the elementary principles of what we 
i are to profess. The man who is called upon to direct the 
operation of others, is not fit to do it if he has not himself passed 
through the practical ordeal of them. I remember well the 
treatment of young men at Chiswick thirty years ago, which was 
certainly very arbitrary and tyrannical; but those who, like 
myself and Sir Joseph Paxton, had the moral courage to put up 
with it, are all the better men for it. 
The period of producing fruit is sometimes changed by pruning. 
This is done with the Raspberry. The strong canes which would 
otherwise produce early fruit, are cut down to within two or 
three eyes of the base; and from these bases shoots are produced 
by the’accumulated sap, which cannot, from their exuberance, 
lorm their fruit so soon as those of more moderate growths. In 
other fruits the destruction of the present crop often leads to the 
formation of another one. 
It is an axiom in pruning, that in order to gain vigorous 
growth it should take place early, and late if a contrary result is 
desired, The roots are constantly accumulating sap 5 and if 
branches are removed late in the season, much that has been 
stored up is also removed with them, and by its removal fruitful 
qualities are often induced in plants. 
The practice of pruning the roots of transplanted trees is 
one which is very generally practised, but it may be questioned 
whether it is not quite as well omitted as practised. It 
is, however, a general rule amongst “ practical,” to cut a 
certain quantity of branches from a removed tree, and also to 
reduce its roots in the like proportion; but they ought not, in 
my opinion, to have their roots curtailed, because from their in¬ 
capacity, buds and leaves being few, they are unable to form 
roots quickly; and if further they are deprived of their existing 
roots by the awful manipulations of an indiscreet pruner, they 
will probably languish and die. I have made many experiments 
i in transplanting, and fully concur in all that Sir H. Stewart has 
done and written on that subject. No small branch or slender 
spongiole should be sacrificed in the operation, if we wish to 
preserve the primitive form and beauty of our trees. 
But we have been speaking of pruning to induce luxuriance, 
let us now speak of that which is to induce productiveness. Of 
this part, root pruning manifests itself very prominently. It is 
an art which has been long practised by the very best gardeners, 
and one which is most truly the gardener’s friend. It enables 
one to have the most perfect control over the energies of a tree, 
and, having willed that it should bear, to make it do so. In per¬ 
forming this we would not take a spade and cut through all the 
body of strong and fibrous roots at once, as is too commonly 
done; but we would begin a considerable distance from the tree, 
and disentangle carefully every fibre, and having spread abroad 
the network of roots, would carefully select those gourmands 
which we thought overfed the plant, and remove them by cutting 
them out, insuring as a sequence a productive habit. 
Numerous, indeed, are the varieties and modes of pruning the 
different species of plants for various objects. The two principal 
times for performing these operations being midwinter and mid¬ 
summer ; at the latter season the gardener arranges his branches 
to form the tree, and in the winter thins and regulates them. 
There is, in common parlance, a time for pruning, and it is but 
too fashionable a failing to do all at that one specified time ; but. 
we would caution all primers to weigh well then' object before 
commencing. If they want additional luxuriance let them begin 
early in the season, when the roots will be slowly, but constantly 
storing up supplies of food; and if, on the contrary, they wish 
to weaken the vigour of their plants, let them prune late, thereby 
removing much of that hoarded supply which would be expended 
on the production of strong luxuriant wood. 
Henry Bailey, Nimehcm . 
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A 
SPECIES AND A VARIETY? 
In a very able periodical, “ Fraser’s Magazine” for the present 
month, I saw it stated that “ Varieties when crossed produce 
fertile offspring; sjpecies either do not cross at all, or when 
crossed their offspring is sterile.” Is this an accurate distinction 
between a variety and a species ?— Inquirer. 
[Certainly not in the case of plants; and in this opinion we 
are sustained by Mr. Beaton, who has more experience in hy¬ 
bridising and crossing plants than most men. He writes to us 
as follows:—“ Varieties, as far as I have tried, will give an in¬ 
termediate offspring when crossed, provided that both parents 
would in eveiy instance come quite true from seeds. But if 
either of the parents lias the slightest inclination to sport, there 
is no reliance on obtaining a true cross-bred seedling. All the 
varieties that have been hitherto crossed produced fertile and 
barren seedlings indiscriminately ; and the very same result, and 
none other, has been the case with all species that have been 
crossed. Very many of the most trifling varieties from crossed 
varieties come quite as true from seeds as the most permanent 
species of botany. Yea, more; a certain peculiarity will run 
down from one to four, five, six, and more generations of such 
seedlings, both in varieties and in species; but in truth and in 
Nature there is no difference between a species and a permanent 
variety, meaning by the latter any variety which comes true from 
aeeds—as, for instance, the large-flowered variety of Mignonette; 
that variety is just as true a species as any species in the whole 
j circle of botany. 
“ All the attempts at classifying, and the pretonded results of 
classifying, the results of crossing species and varieties, and all 
