In years gone by, as the remaining trees in old orchards show, there was an almost universal practice of throwing the tree-tops high into the air; first, by allowing the trunks to arise some six or seven feet before they throw out branches; and, second, by pruning the branches near the trunk, leaving merely a tuft of limbs at the extremities of these naked arms. These outside tree-heads, formed on branches that had the appearance of artificial trees thrown out from the trunk, of course receded further from the main body of the tree each year.

The disadvantages of this way of growing trees are, their greater liability to be shaken and broken by high winds; the longer the lever, the greater the power in raising heavy bodies; the further the heavy tree-top is removed from the earth, the more power the winds will exert to overturn a tree. Then the branches are more liable to be broken by the weight of top being far removed from the trunk, or, if not directly broken, they are severely twisted, and thus made unhealthy, which, in due time, insures their decay.

The fruit on such trees is much more liable to be prematurely blown off by high winds; they are gathered with much more difficulty when mature. If the tree is shaken, as is still the custom with many, it is sadly bruised by the fall from these high tree-tops; and if picked off, the danger to life and limb in the operation is increased in a greater ratio than the increasing distance from the ground.

But there is yet another objection to this method of tree-forming, fully equal to, if not greater than, all others. Sap is the life of the tree, and the excess of sap goes to perfect the fruit. The longer the trunk and branches of the tree, the more of this must go to support the wood; the more the small branches are thrown into tufts at the extremities of large limbs, the fewer will be the leaves to elaborate sap for the nourishment of the tree, and perfection of fruit; consequently, a feeble tree and small and inferior fruit will, in the end, be the result of the miserable system.

By the above noted system of tree-growing, they are more exposed to the ravages of insects. The more bare wood, and greater exposure of it to atmospherio changes, the feebler the tree, and more subject to attacks, not only of the hosts of animal depredators that feast most greedily upon such trees; lichens gather on them more readily, and feed on their very vitals. Any one must know that these evils can not be so readily contended with on a high, ill-shapen tree as when near the surface; so that, besides the increased amount of danger from the evils alluded to, the difficulty of obviating them is so much increased that, in a sort of indolent discouragement, they are neglected, and old, moss-covered, worm-webbed, insect-bored trees in a few years take the place of what may now be a young, thrifty, and promising orchard.

When Nature raises trees, she does it on her own economical plan - one best calculated to give health and long life to her subject. In the forest we see trees shoot up their tall, mast-like trunks with a few branches at their extremities. Such trees are protected by surrounding trees while the forest remains; but remove the burden of timber, and how the remaining trees are rocked and shaken by the wind! How often their beautiful heads are decapitated by the raging storm ] Who ever saw such trees on the border of a wood lot, or standing in isolated positions about fields? Such trees, if on the border of woodlands, throw out branches near the ground, to shield the body of the tree from storms and son-beams. And the specimen of unrivalled symmetry in the field - how low its branches, and how beautifully it throws its long arms abroad! Yet these arms are not the naked ones that invite disease, but all along their length they throw out little branches, from each of which a clump of leaves appear to aid in furnishing the tree with healthy life-blood. If these branches become too numerous, or if the weaker interfere with the stronger, nature prunes and casts off what is superfluous.

But to our fruit-trees. The best specimen of an Apple-tree we ever saw made its head so near the ground that a person can without difficulty step into the lower branches, and these branches spread so low that the fruit can be gathered without difficulty by a person standing on the ground. They are long branches, and the top of the tree forms a symmetrical hemisphere. Neither the axe nor the saw has been accessory to forming that tree-head. The hand and the pruning-knife directed the first starting of these branches, and here they stopped, unless two combatant branches so interfered with each other's rights that one of them must be removed. This tree-top is so dense and so wide, that the hot midsummer sun can not send his fiery rays to scorch the unprotected part of the tree. They fall upon its leafy head, and the warm atmosphere is diffused along the trunk and among the branches. No insects have ever disturbed the tree, unless it were some straggling worm that so for forgot the rules of propriety and honor as to commence its web among its branches.

And, what is far better, it has never failed of a crop since it commenced bearing.

Low trees come into leaf, flower, etc, earlier than tall ones. A Pear-tree seven feet high had branches within a foot of the surface of the ground. The lowest branches were in full leaf before the buds on the top of the tree had developed the color of the leaf. And a Plum-tree, with branches near the ground, gave blossoms on the lower branches from a week to ten days earlier than they appeared in the upper part of the tree. Let the difference continue in the same ratio through the season, and many of our fruits would be raised in much higher perfection than they now are.

We have no doubt but many of our old orchards have been injured more by i injudicious over-pruning than in any other way. Tree-pruning was almost a mania. It must be done every spring. This lower limb must be taken off, and that branch pruned as far out as the operator dared to venture, and could reach with the destructive axe. Such a system of tree-torturing and tree-mutilating could not be otherwise than destructive.

[Here are important truths, forcibly put. There is one point that we should have made stronger, and that is, that low-branched trees come into bearing at an earlier age than others. We think there can be no doubt at all about this; it ought, therefore, in connection with other manifest advantages, to determine our treatment of fruit-trees. We commend Mr. Bacon's remarks to serious consideration. - Ed].