[os) 
uf 
Or 
AGRICULTURAL AND MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 
EXPERIMENTS IN THE TREATMENT oF APPLE TREES. 
The second Report of the Woburn Experimental Fruit 
Farm* contains a full account of a useful series of experi- 
ments with different methods of treatment applied to apple 
trees. Dwarf trees of Bramley’s Seedling, Cox’s Orange 
Pippin, and Potts’ Seedling, all on the Paradise stock, were 
employed, arranged so that each experiment embraced a row 
of eighteen trees, six of each of the three varieties. Some 
of the experiments were also repeated with Stirling Castle, 
and others with standard trees of Bramley, Cox, and Lane’s 
Prince Albert. All these trees were planted in 1894-95, the 
dwarfs being then three years old and the standards four. 
In each experiment the “ normal” treatment was altered in 
some one particular. The normal treatment as regards the 
branches was moderate pruning in autumn and a shortening 
of the main growths in summer. The summer shortening 
has been omitted during the last three years, and the 
extent of the autumn pruning has been gradually reduced, 
till, in the present year, the normal pruning consists of little 
more than shaping the trees and removing unnecessary 
batches, 
With regard to the question of cutting back the branches 
of a tree after planting it, the general conclusion drawn 
from the experiments is that but little difference is caused 
whether the trees are cut back at once or not till a year 
after planting, but such difference as there is, with the 
doubtful exception of the increase in weight, is in favour of 
* Report on the working and results ‘of the Woourn Experimental Fruit. Farm, by 
the Duke of Bedford and. Spencer U..Pickering, F.R.S. 
