HOW should trees be pruned at the time of transplanting or should they be pruned at all are yet open questions among planters. As the subject will at this season of the year be one of the most general interest, we propose to offer a few remarks on it.

The objects in view in pruning a tree at the time of transplanting are three-fold. First, The removal of all bruised and broken roots and branches. The necessity for this is obvious and indisputable: bruised and broken roots, when planted without being dressed, must decay and interpose very serious obstacles to the formation of new roots; they should therefore always be pruned off closely to the sound wood, and with a sharp knife that will make a smooth, clean cut, the sloping surface of which should invariably be on the under and not on the upper sides of the roots. In making the cut, the knife should be laid to the under side of the root, and drawn upward. The young roots which subsequently spring from the cut end of the root, as from the end of a cutting, strike downward at once, as is natural. The reasons for pruning off broken or bruised branches are equally obvious. A broken branch left on a tree will produce an unsightly and in some cases a dangerous scar; but if it be pruned off close to the body of the tree, or to a sound bud, the wound will soon heal over or a new shoot will be produced. It is very common, in pruning hastily, to leave small portions of branches without eyes.

These, instead of producing new shoots, die off, and the new wood growing in around them produces unsoundness that in many cases brings the tree to an untimely end.

The second object in pruning is, to mold the tree to the desired form. Trees com-ing from the nurseries are seldom in the exact shape that the planter wishes. They have too many side branches, their heads are too low or too high, or they have some other defect which the knife must remedy. Now the question comes up, How far is it judicious to attempt the formation of the tree at the moment of transplanting? Several points must be considered. If the trees are standards for the orchard, and they happen to be somewhat slender in proportion to their height, it would be unwise to prune off closely any side branches they might have, because this would direct the future growth to the top, and urge the tree still further out of balance and proportion. In such cases, the aim should be to increase the growth of the stem; and this can only be done by retaining two or three good eyes or buds of every side shoot, or of a sufficient number of the strongest and best, and by reducing the attracting power of the branches at the top.

The influence of this is seen in the case of forest trees planted in the street, where the entire head is sawed off at planting, and nothing but a bare pole or pollard left; the growth is thrown into the trunk, which soon becomes covered with new shoots, and increases its diameter rapidly. If the tree has been pruned up too high in the nursery, making the head higher than desired, a new head must be formed lower down by cutting back the tree; but whether it is better to attempt this at the moment of transplanting, or wait until the tree has taken root, and is capable of making a vigorous growth, is a question. This is a point of Borne importance. We know that newly planted trees push but feebly at best, in comparison with those well rooted, and that the shoots produced the first season make a very indifferent frame work for the tree. We have considerable experience on this very point, and we have come to the conclusion that it is much better to defer the pruning which is to produce the final and permanent form of the tree, until the second year, or until the tree shows unmistakable signs of being well rooted, and in a condition to make vigorous growth.

But care must be taken to preserve and encourage, as far as possible, young shoots with active buds on the parts where we intend to produce the new head; because old wood, in which the buds have become in a measure dormant, does not throw out branches with desirable rapidity and vigor.

If on the other hand, the head be too low, the first impulse would naturally be to prune it up. But this demands some caution. Where branches of considerable size are pruned off, when the tree is transplanted, and consequently unfit to make much growth, the fresh surface of the wounds dry up, and do not heal over quickly, as when the tree is in an active and vigorous condition. Beside, buds are essential to growth; and if too great a proportion of them be removed at once, the power of the cells or sap-vessels is impaired, and they cannot transmit the nutritive fluids from the roots upward. The roots, too, lose their activity, and general stagnation and debility follow. The better way is to reduce the head by thinning out some branches and shortening others, especially the lower ones; and in the season following, or when the tree has fairly recovered from removal, the large branches may be removed and the stem formed higher up; the upper shoots allowed to remain having sufficient power to maintain the functions of the different parts of the tree in full force and vigor.

The third object in pruning at the time of transplanting, is, to restore the balance or proportion between the roots and branches, which has been disturbed in the process of removal. A transplanted tree, no matter how carefully or skillfully it may have been operated upon, has its system materially deranged* The roots may neither be bruised or broken, nor the fibres dried or injured by exposure; and yet the ordinary functions of the various parts, and their reciprocal action and influence upon each other, can not but be in a measure arrested for a time. The roots can not abstract nutriment from the soil, and convey it through the trunk and branches, to supply the demand of the leaves, until they have taken to their new position and emitted new rootlets or feeders. Until this takes place, the demand x>f the leaves must be supplied from the stock of nutriment previously laid up in the cells, just as we see young shoots subsisting for a time on trees that have been cut down or torn up by the roots. As long as any sap remains in the cells, and can find a passage to the leaves, the latter continue green and healthy; but as soon as the sap is expended, and the cells dried up, the leaves wither, and vitality terminates.