IN some of the late numbers of the Horticulturist, an extract is quoted to the effect that I have recently changed my views with regard to pruning pear trees. Let me answer these assertions by giving the following extracts from the last article that I prepared on this subject, merely stating that it expresses the views that I have held, and frequently expressed for at least a dozen years past:

Culture

The best mode of treating the soil in pear orchards is an important question, both in regard to the health of the tree and the production of fruit. Laying aside all special circumstances, it appears evident that the condition of the plants will indicate the treatment required; the object being to maintain health and encourage fruitfulness. The measure of successful accomplishment of these conditions will greatly depend upon the knowledge of the principles governing vegetable growth possessed by the cultivator. When the trees are young the chief object is to encourage judicious growth by employing expedients known to favor vegetable extension, such as the application of manures, breaking up and pulverizing the soil, surface stirring, and other similar operations. By judicious growth is meant a luxuriance not incompatible with maturity, and as this will depend upon climate and locality, it is evident that a discriminating knowledge of cause and effect will largely influence success.

In northern latitudes where the season of growth is confined to five months' duration, it will be impossible to mature the same amount of wood that can be produced on trees in a locality having seven months of growing season. In the latter ease stimulating appliances may be used with the best effects that would only tend to dissolution in the climate of short summers. The great desideratum in fruit culture is ripened wood; all useful cultivation begins and ends with this single object in view, and is the criterion of good or bad management.

To cultivate, or not to cultivate, is a question to be determined by climate and condition of soil. Where it is deemed advisable to encourage growth, it will be proper to employ such appliances of culture as are known to produce that result; and again, when ample luxuriance is secured, and the tendency is still in that direction, all surface culture should be abandoned, and the orchard be laid down in grass; cultivation to be again practiced when the trees indicate its necessity.

The pear tree is usually a victim of excessive pruning. It is pruned in winter to make it grow, and pruned and pinched in summer to make it fruit. Why it is that the pear, more than other spur-bearing fruit trees should be supposed to require so close and continued pruning, does not appear of easy explanation. It is evident that this immoderate pruning is not followed by satisfactory results, for while apple, plum and cherry trees fruit with abundant regularity, with but little attention to pruning, unfruitfulness in the pear is a frequent cause of complaint, especially with those who pay the strictest attention to pruning rules, showing clearly that successful pear culture is not dependent upon pruning alone. While it is perhaps equally erroneous to assert that pear trees should not be pruned at all - an extreme which do experienced cultivator will indorse - it it worthy of inquiry, whether unpruned trees do not exhibit a better fruit-bearing record than those which have been subject to the highest pruning codes.

How far the proverbial liability of the pear to suffer from blight, may be due to the interference and disarrangement of growths caused by summer pruning, it may not be possible to decide; but the tendency to late fall growths, and the consequent immaturity of wood which is thereby encouraged, is well known to be of much injury, and greatly conducive to disease. Perhaps no advice that has been given is so fruitful a cause of failure and disappointment in fruit culture, as that embodied in the brief sentence, " Prune in summer for fruit".

The physiological principle upon which this advice is based, is that which recognizes barrenness in fruit trees as the result of an undue amount of wood growth; and that, in accordance with acknowledged laws, any process that will secure a reduction of growth will induce fruitfulness. The removal of foliage from a tree in active growth will weaken its vitality, by causing a corresponding check to the extension of roots, but the removal of the mere points of strong shoots has no palpable effect in checking root growth; the roots proceed to grow, and the sap seeks outlets in other channels,' forming new shoots, which in no way increase the fruitfulness of the plant.

While it may be confidently stated that, as a practical rule, easily followed, and of general application, summer pruning for fruit cannot be recommended except as an expedient rarely successful; it is also true that there are certain periods in the growth of a plant when the removal of a portion of the shoots would tend to increase the development of the remaining buds, without causing them to form shoots. For example, if the growing shoots of a pear tree are shortened or pruned by removing one-third of their length, say, toward the end of June, the check will immediately cause the remaining buds on these shoots to push into growth and produce a mass of twigs as far removed as may be from being fruit producing branches. Again, if this pruning is delayed until August, and the season afterwards proves to be warm and dry, the probabilities are that .the remaining buds will develop into short spur-like shoots, from which blossom buds may, in course of time, be formed; but if the season proves to be wet, and mild growing weather extends late into the fall, these same shoots will be lengthened into weakly, slender growths, which never mature, and are of no use whatever.

There is no certainty as to the proper time to summer prune, because no two seasons are precisely alike, and trees vary in their vigor from year to year; and yet this uncertain, indefinite, and constantly experimental procedure is the basis upon which the advice to "prune in summer for fruit," is founded.

The pear tree, in fact, requires very little pruning, and that only so far as may be necessary to regulate branches in either of two exigencies. In the first place, when the young tree is placed in its permanent position in the orchard, its roots will be greatly disturbed, and many of them destroyed ; it will, therefore, be expedient in this exigency to abridge the branches, so as to restore the balance of growth that existed between the roots and branches previous to-removal.

This pruning at transplanting has its opponents on the theoretical grounds that, as the formation of roots is dependent upon the action of leaves, it must follow that the more branches and leaves left upon a plant, the more rapidly will new roots be produced; but there is one important element overlooked in this reasoning, namely, the loss of sap by evaporation, which speedily exhausts the plant, while it has no active roots to meet the demand. The proper practice is to reduce the branches so as to give the roots the preponderance, and many kinds of trees can only be successfully removed by cutting the stem off close to the ground.

If the tree has been pruned close back at planting, the first summer will develop the foundation for a well-balanced, symmetrical plant; but as this result depends upon a good start, it is well to keep an eye on the young growths during the first season, and if any of the shoots appear to be developing to the detriment of others equally necessary for future branches, the points of such shoots should be pinched off, but in doing so, let there be as small a removal of foliage as possible, the object being not to weaken, but merely to equalize growth. As a general rule, no advantage will be gained by pruning any portion of the shoots after the first season, unless in the case of weakly trees, which will be strengthened by pruning down during winter. The removal of branches during summer weakens growth, but when a portion of the branches are removed after growth is completed, the roots, not having been disturbed, will have the balance of power, and the number of buds being diminished, those that are left will receive increased vigor.

It should never be forgotten that there is nothing more certain than that by shortening-in, or pruning back the ends of shoots, either in summer or winter, the fruit-producing period is retarded, and the fruit-producing capabilities of the trees abridged. Fruiting spurs will not form where the growths are constantly interrupted and excited by pruning; but, after the third or fourth year, young shoots will, in the majority of varieties, become covered with fruiting spurs the second year after their formation, if left to their natural mode and condition of growth. Of course this refers to trees in soils of moderate fertility, grown in a climate favorable to the plant.

The only pruning, then, that is really essential, after the plant has become established, will be confined to thinning out crowded branches, and this forms the second exigency for pruning. If low-headed trees are preferred, those branches that have become destitute of fruiting spurs near the body of the tree may be cut out, and a young shoot be allowed to take the place of the one removed. There will be no lack of young shoots for this purpose, as they will be produced from the base of the cut branch, selecting the strongest and best placed to occupy the vacancy, if such occupancy is desired. This mode of cutting back branches will be more particularly essential in the case of dwarf pear trees, as the quince roots are unable to support a tall, heavy-headed tree, but in all other respects dwarf pears should be treated the same as standards.

It may be instructive to briefly recite the history of a small dwarf pear orchard, numbering about 130 trees, and consisting of as many varieties.

These were planted during the spring of 1865, being good two-year old trees ; the leading shoots were pruned down to a uniform height of 30 inches, and the side shoots out back to two buds. No further pruning was deemed necessary until the winter of 1870, when some of the tallest center branches were removed, and others thinned out by complete removal. In the spring of 1867, the entire surface of the orchard was sown with our ordinary lawn grasses - blue grass and red top - and remains in sod up to the present time.

For three years past these trees have produced heavy crops; the fruit was thinned, but not sufficiently, although thirty bushels were removed at one thinning in July. Samples of fruit from these trees were exhibited at the Pomological meeting held at Richmond last month. They happened to be placed alongside a collection from California, and in every case where the same varieties occurred in the two collections, the Washington fruit was equal in size and beauty to that from the Pacific coast.

Washington) Oct., 1871. William Saunders.