“Let us first see what takes place in a single branch. Pruned long, it preserves the greater part of its buds, all of which call for nourishment from the sap flowing in that direction; pruned short, it keeps only a few buds, which having the sap of the entire branch at their disposal, will receive each a supply that is superabundant in proportion to the fewness of the buds. For example, what twelve would ordinarily have had for consumption, two or three will now have to themselves; and because of this superabundance of nourishment each bud will develop much more vigorously than it would otherwise have done. Hence if the whole tree is pruned with an unsparing hand, all the sap drawn from the soil by the roots, having no longer a tendency to go to one side rather than the other, will be distributed evenly; and the few buds left intact by the pruning-shears will show a luxuriance of growth in proportion to the supply of nourishment placed at their disposal. Thus thorough pruning applied to the whole tree has the effect of giving it new vigor, of rejuvenating it in some measure, or, in other words, of replacing its worn-out branches with vigorous ones. Accordingly when a tree has become exhausted by abundant fruit-bearing, it is pruned without stint one year in order to restore its vigor of growth. “Let us now see what we should do if we had quite the opposite end in view; that is, if we wished to make a tree blossom and bear fruit. Here two principles will serve us as guides. First, in the fulness of its vigor a tree puts forth long branches and thick foliage, but does not cover itself with blossoms, bearing in fact only a few. It is not until it has become somewhat enfeebled that it begins to flower in profusion. Secondly, what would in the tree’s youthful strength have been a branch-producing bud becomes in its enfeeblement a flower-bud; so that a flower may be regarded as a branch which, instead of developing freely and covering itself with leaves, has remained stunted, thrown back upon itself, for lack of vigor, and has exchanged its leaves for floral organs,—sepals, petals, stamens, pistils. Weaken a tree and you weaken the buds; such, in a word, is the prevailing principle. “To weaken the buds individually, the pruning-shears will be plied but sparingly, leaving the buds almost intact; then these, being many in number, will have so much the less for each one separately, and some of them, especially toward the lower part of the branch, will find themselves too feeble to contend with the others and therefore will take the form of flower-buds, whereas they would have produced branches and not flowers if a more thorough pruning had rid them of their rivals.