The hedge value of the Osage Orange must be ascertained from actual experiments. Believing that a collection and comparison of facts already discovered would go far to settle the question, I will venture to add a modicum from my own experience to what has been said in your practical and useful journal. One hundred and fifty yards of hedge were planted in double rows with the plants one foot apart. These were cut down daring the first three years, respectively, to within six, eighteen, and thirty-six inches of the ground. When four years old, the hedge was seven feet high, beautiful and impassable, except for small pigs, etc. It was now manifest that, even if I had cut down more severely, it would not have been sufficiently close at the bottom; because the cutting produced shoots too few and too upright to close the fence. A heavy trimming made a few rampant upright shoots. This, in rich soil, is commonly the great difficulty. The few horizontal branches are deprived of vigor and vitality by the rapid growth of these leaders.

Instead of despairing of success, armed with stout gloves and a fine-toothed saw, I cut one hundred yards down to stumps only four inches high. When the first drop of shoots had started and grown three inches, I commenced "the pinching process," by nipping their tender tips with the thumb and fingers. This stayed their progress until they could branch again, and it had a twofold effect. First, it formed a second tier of branches just where they were needed, and where the old method could have formed them only after another season, by cutting away almost a whole year's growth. Second, it threw back the sap, which would have pushed up the rampant leaders, into the dormant buds on the stumps still nearer the ground than those which first started and were nipped. These new shoots, in coming up, had to spread somewhat horizontally. When they had grown about the length at which the first ones were stopped, they too were nipped. By this time (about two weeks from the first pinching), those shoots which were first stopped were breaking thickly and beautifully into side branches, the leaders of which were also pinched when they had grown about four inches, stopping them until, in two weeks, they would branch and form the third tier, which the old method would have got by cutting down after another year.

Thus, before the end of the season, notwithstanding these checks, the hedge was again four feet high, presenting a wall of glossy foliage, and so thickly woven throughout with twigs and thorns as to be impassable by the smallest domestic animals. It is now two years old from the stumps, is seven feet high, and entirely satisfactory.

It should be remarked that the pinching need not be continued longer than until you have "thickened your hedge to the height of about three feet. After securing this prime object, it will require less attention, and yon can trim and shape it with knife and shears as you please.

Any one can, in this way, compel the Osage orange hedge to grow as thick at the bottom as he pleases.

The advantages are - that you can begin as low as you please, make as many shoots as you please, locate them where you please, and secure the results of three years in one season - I mean in getting the hedge thickly closed at the bottom.

Besides, the whole vigor of the roots and the whole growth of the plants (except the trifling amount pinched off) are at once made subservient to perfect- ing the hedge. I may add that, in addition to saving and directing the whole growth aright, the pinching is much less injurious than the heavy lopping of shoots two or three feet long, annually, for three years.

Nor can it be a valid objection that too much time and attention are requisite daring the one summer in which the pinching must be done. A careful considera-tionof what has been said above, or at least actual experiment, will prove that time and trouble have been saved.

The operator will be surprised at the speed and facility with which he can nip out the tender tops, compared with the time and toil of cutting the large, hard, and thorny wood of a year's growth.

Even if hedges could not be treated so "by the mile" this will not diminish the importance of the method to thousands of cultivators around our cities and villages, whose valuable products can be secured only by an impassable barrier of thorns.

For such purposes, the Orange hedge is unrivalled. To the fruit garden it is a body-guard of spearmen, ever ready to impale transgressors.

I do not say that hedges cannot be made thick and close by any other method, but only that I have found this a certain method, and I think it the best.

I should add, that in treating a newly-planted hedge, I would allow it to grow for one season to establish the roots. The next spring I would cut down to within three inches of the ground, and then commence the pinching of young shoots, as already described.

The extent to which the roots will exhaust the soil, being in proportion to the height and breadth allowed to the hedge itself, is very much under our own con- trol in trimming. Ton may also root-prune by a deep furrow, which will limit the extension of the roots near the surface, and there will be no trouble with suckers.

Experiment With The Osage Orange #1

I should like to see the Western men, who grow Orange hedges by the mile, "pinching" their shoots by way of trimming! No, no, Mr. Alexander, that won't do. A successful hedge plant in this country, has got to bear cutting down, or cutting off with a bill-hook, scythe, or shears, as may be, or it's of no use in farm hedging. I've seen a couple of models of machines for clipping hedges, to work by horse-power, which, if they work at all, will trim miles a day. We'll know more about these hedges five years hence.