PRUNING, properly considered, is one of the most important operations connected with the growth and management of trees and plants. That many do not so regard it, we hare the most abundant evidence. Orchard pruning, which may be considered the simplest and plainest of all pruning - almost mechanical - is either so unskillfully done in general, or so neglected, that we feel safe in saying that the orchards of this country are diminished in value at least one-half. There are many erroneous notions in regard to this as well as other branches of culture, that must be abandoned before we can hope to attain to anything like a complete, profitable, or perfect system. Some regard pruning as merely a mechanical operation that any man may perform, and that in rare cases only is necessary. Their practice is in perfect keeping with this belief. Others, and among them some who occupy the position of teachers and expounders of the principles and practice of horticulture, speak of it as being merely a superfluous and costly refinement in cultivation, that people of leisure may indulge in for their amusement, but as being quite inconsistent with an economical and profitable course of culture.

It is not a paying operation they say, and therefore it will pay best to let it alone.

How common it is to hear this argument of " it won't pay," raised against all improvement It wont pay to drain, nor to fence, nor to plow deep, nor manure well; it won't pay to buy good stock at a good price, nor to provide them with good food and shelter and care; and so this excuse is offered for everything that is miserable in farming. It won't pay, say our city authorities, to make sewers and clean the streets and purify the atmosphere, and so disease is invited to waste the lives and interrupt the business of the people. Occasionally, however, an agriculturist more enlightened, more enterprising and daring than his neighbors, lays aside the popular notion, and drains and trenches and fences; buys the best breeds of animals, erects them good houses: and he grows rich; and if not rich, famous, - his name is passed around as a master spirit - a model farmer. So another city, under a more enlightened and liberal administration, adopts a thorough system of sewerage, and removes every source of impurity, regardless of the expense or of a clamorous opposition; and when epidemics prevail, it rejoices in health and uninterrupted prosperity, while death is causing dismay and desolation in others. Then it finds out that it pays to be cleanly.

The notion that "it won't pay" to do everything well, is a great error.

But pruning, some say, is an unnatural operation, practised or recommended only by certain enthusiastic persons whose zeal has outrun their knowledge. That it is throwing difficulties and expenses in the way of cultivation that ought to be avoided, and that the less we practice it the better. Nature, they say, never prunes, and why should we? People who talk thus do not know what they say. To be consistent, they must not only discard pruning, but budding, grafting, spade and hoe culture, and in fact the entire routine of operations which constitute our present advanced and comparatively perfect system of cultivation. Nature neither buds or grafts, nor hoes, nor spades, nor drains, nor manures. She does not make vine borders nor hot-beds, build vineries nor green-houses. These are unnatural operations, in the estimation of some people, inasmuch as they are not natural. It is right and proper that the cultivator should study nature well, for her laws cannot be violated with impunity; but it is his business to aid her by all the means which art and science has furnished him.

Nature unaided does not produce Black Hamburg grapes, Bartlett pears, Newtown Pippin apples, nor Early York peaches; but she has given us the raw material from which to produce all of them, and she has indicated certain conditions necessary to their growth and improvement.

Nothing can appear more unnatural to the man who is ignorant of the principles of cultivation, than the common treatment of foreign grapes. They are not only furnished with unnatural supplies of food, but their' pruning consists in cutting away annually three-fourths of their young wood. Now our natural cultivator might say that nature never intended the grape to be subjected to such treatment. But what sort of grapes would we produce without it? Fine fruits and beautiful trees and plants are not the spontaneous production of unaided nature, but require the intervention of a multitude of nice and skillful operations, which constitute the art of gardening. Neither do men arrive at a knowledge of these operations instinctively; they are not so perfectly plain and simple as to require no study, no teaching, no experience.

Those who think and write otherwise, only deceive themselves and others. The most simple mechanical art requires two or three years of an apprenticeship. A nail, a pin, or a shoe peg, are very simple objects - no mystery whatever about them; and yet men cannot instinctively become peg-makers, pin-makers, or nailers. A tree is a far more complicated piece of mechanism than any of these. It has an organization and a life. It is composed of a multitude of parts, each of which has its functions to fulfil, and all these parts bear certain relations to each other and to the life and growth of the whole tree, just as each of the various parts of the apparently complicated steam engine has a certain part to play, and is essential to the completeness and efficiency of the whole. A machinist is expected to know the name and particular purpose of every beam and bolt and screw of the engine which he constructs, but he is not expected to acquire that knowledge instinctively. He must exercise both hie mind and his hands, he must think and read and practice for years, before he will dare call himself a machinist or an engineer.

Trees have roots and rootlets, stems, branches, leaves and buds; all these are designated by certain names, and have distinct offices to perform in the process of vegetation and fruit bearing. Then there are different genera and species and varieties of trees and plants, all differing in certain habits of growth, and bearing and requiring different treatment as regards soil, culture, climate, etc. The intelligent cultivator must be familiar with the names and functions of all these parts, the peculiar structure, mode of growth and bearing of the different genera and species and varieties; but will it come to him intuitively, any more than a knowledge of mechanics! Let those answer who have devoted a long life to the study and practice of field and garden culture, and find that at last they are but learners; and that if they were to live three times the ordinary life of man, they would be learners still.

We are not disposed to magnify the difficulties of cultivation, or to convey the impression that every man may not be a successful culturist; but we feel it our duty to the young, at least, to expose the fallacy of the teaching that cultivation is so plain and simple that "he that runs may read," and that those who inculcate the necessity of study and research, and of minute and careful operations, are mere "enthusiastic humbugs." Whoever gives ear to such absurdities, can never hope to attain eminence as a cultivator.

Pruning, as we said in the outset, is one of the most important operations connected with the culture and management of trees. It is an indispensable operation to a greater or less extent, from the moment when the seedling is taken from the seed bed, through all the phases of its development, until its existence as a living organized body terminates. What nurseryman transplants a stock into his nursery rows without pruning? And does he not prune his young trees at one and two and three or four years' growth, until they are ready for their final destination ? Were it not for this constant annual or periodical care, a nursery would become an impenetrable jungle, and sensible men who wanted trees would avoid it as they would a pestilence. Then, who transplants trees into the garden or orchard without pruning ? Roots and branches are necessarily submitted to this operation by every careful and skillful planter. Nor is it indispensable to trees alone, but to every shrub or plant that comes within the sphere of cultivation.

What gardener can grow a respectable looking geranium, a rose, or a fuchsia, without pruning? What is it but the effects of pruning that distinguishes the magnificent specimens which figure at the exhibitions of Chiswick, from the tall, lean, mis-shapen deformities that have been left to nature, and that every man feels ashamed to own. There is no such thing in reality, as growing well-shaped, symmetrical trees and plants, and sustaining them in a vigorous and fruitful state, without pruning. But we must say, however, that necessary and useful though it be, we should greatly prefer to have it undone than done unskillfully. "The object of the pruner," says Lindley, (Theory of Horticulture,) "is to diminish the number of leaves and branches; whence it may be understood how delicate are the operations he has to practice, and how thorough a knowledge he ought to possess of all the laws which regulate the organs of vegetation. If well-directed, pruning is one of the most useful, and if ill-directed, it is among the most mischievous operations that can take place upon a plant".

Every man of experience will endorse this statement. The pruner should know well what he does, and the precise reasons why he does it Pruning is not lopping off a branch at random, as a man who walks in the dark, not knowing whether he is advancing on safe footing or about to step over a precipice. Every cut that a pruner makes upon a tree or plant, should be guided by a knowledge of the habits of growth, and blossoming, and bearing of the subject, and have a well understood and determined object in view. A feeble tree and a vigorous tree must not be pruned alike, no more than an invalid should be served with the same food, and urged to the same labor as a man in full health. An apple and a pear tree that produce their fruit only (with rare exception) on wood of three years old and upwards, cannot be pruned in the same way as a peach or a nectarine that bears principally on wood of one season's growth. The grape, the currant, the raspberry, the quince, the filbert, and the fig, have each a peculiar mode of growth and of bearing, and the pruning applied to them must be based upon an accurate knowledge of this. Even in the same species, a prolific variety must not be pruned in the same way as a shy bearer.

The cultivator of ornamental plants knows how necessary it is to understand the mode of flowering of plants, in order to prune them well. In roses, for instance, all the perpetual bloomers produce their blossoms on young wood of the current season's growth, while the summer roses generally produce their blossoms or blossom shoots from wood of the preceding year.

Pruning becomes plain and simple when these principles are studied, and instead of being a superfluous, expensive, or unnatural operation, is one of the most useful, interesting, and beautiful, enabling us to exercise a perfect control over the forms and fruitfulness of our trees, and to adapt them to every circumstance and condition that fancy or interest may dictate. There is certainly no branch of culture so inviting to gentlemen who love their gardens and their trees, and desire to participate in their management. It is a pleasant exercise for both body and mind, and its practice not only awakens increased interest in regard to the trees themselves, but throws a new light and suggests new inquiries on the whole subject of vegetation.