WITH several years close observation and experience, we have come to regard late spring, and on into mid-summer, the most favorable season of the year for pruning in this latitude - varying with the season north or south. After the tree is warmed into new life from its winter rest, the sap in full flow, and the tree fairly in leaf, the sooner a wound is made, the more readily and soundly will it close over with a new growth of wood. If pruning be done, as much of it should be, at a time when the bark slips, care should be taken against loosening it, or if loosened,. or bruised, to pare it off smooth. The facility with which the process of healing takes place and goes on, depends materially upon the smoothness of the rim of the wound.

Nothing like specific instruction or directions can be given in pruning. So it appears to us, for we find no operation, in the care and growth of an orchard, that taxes our judgment and skill more. To our mind, the subject can be spoken of only in a general way - that every one who undertakes to properly prune a tree, must, in the main, lean upon his own judgment. We would say, out out smoothly all weak and straggling branches, and all that appear likely to rub or otherwise serionsly interfere with their better fellows during the future growth of the tree. Take off all water sprouts, wherever found, whether springing up from the roots of the tree or out from the main trunk and branches. If trees are set very full of fruit, we do not hesitate to remove some of it with the branches, which ought to be taken out. What is left will be improved, both in size and quality. When branches, two inches or so, are removed, the wound should receive a thin coating of waxen liquid that will adhere and resist the effects of the weather. When pruning either orchard or nursery trees, late in the fall, or in winter, for cions, or for any other object, we invariably leave a stump of the limb or twig, an inch or more in length, to be shortened in close to the main stem, at our usual time for pruning.

If cut close when the tree is in a semi-dormant state, the wood checks, the surrounding bark deadens and protracts the process of healing over.