344 TREATMENT OF APPLE TREES. 



immediate cutting back, especially if early fruiting is desired. 
It is only in the second year after planting, that is in the 
year after the cutting back, that the trees in which this 
operation has been postponed show any advantage over 
those cut back at once ; and this advantage, it is explained, 
is certainly in part, and possibly entirely, due to the 
prevention of fruiting entailed by postponing the cutting 
back. The bad effects of omitting to cut the trees back 
on planting, or to prune them subsequently, were chiefly 
shown in the straggling and bad shape of the resulting tree, 
but the weight of the leaves, and also the girth of the stems, 
showed that these trees were not so vigorous as they should 
have been. The amount of fruit borne, however, was in excess 
of the average. When the trees were cut back, but not. 
subsequently pruned, they showed to a certain extent the 
straggling character just mentioned, but they did not show 
any general loss in vigour or growth. __ 
In the case of the experiments in pruning subsequent to 
cutting-back on planting, the results indicate that nothing 
is gained as regards the size and vigour of the tree, and that 
probably something, though not much, is lost by modifying 
the normal treatment of moderate pruning in the autumn, and 
when necessary shortening the branches a little in summer. 
None of the methods of summer pinching or pruning tried 
at Woburn produced results which recommended such 
treatment from a horticultural point of view. 
The check on the vigour and growth of a tree by cutting or 
injuring its roots was found to be in marked contrast with a 
similar interference with the branches. Trees which had 
been root-pruned every year were in 1898 little more than 
halt as big as the normal trees, and those root-pruned every 
other year were about two - thirds of the normal. The 
crops borne by these trees, however, were heavy in proportion 
to their size. Such frequent root-pruning is not, it is 
observed, a practice which should be adopted. 
Some experiments on replanting showed that trees which 
had been carefully litted every other year and replanted at 
once experienced no ill-effects from the operation; but in a 
case where the trees, after being lifted, had been left in a shed 
