_Transplanting_--should be performed with care, as in the case of all other fruit-trees. Every injured root should be cut off smooth from the under side, slanting out from the tree. Leave the roots, as nearly as possible, in the position in which they were before. Set the tree an inch lower than it stood in the nursery; it saves the danger of the roots getting uncovered, and of too strong action of the atmosphere on the roots, in a soil so loose. The opposite is often recommended, viz., to allow the tree in its new location to stand an inch or two higher than before; but we are sure, from repeated trials, that it is wrong. Shake the fine earth as closely around the roots as possible, mulch well, and pour on a pailful of tepid water, if it be rather a dry time, and the tree will be sure to live and make a good growth the first year. When a peach-tree is transplanted, after one year's growth from the bud, it should have the top cut off within eighteen inches or two feet of the ground, and all the limbs cut off at half their length. This will induce the formation of a full, large head. A low, full-branching head is always best on a peach-tree. _Pruning_ is perhaps the most important matter in successful peach culture. The fruit is borne wholly on wood of the previous year's growth. Hence a tree that has the most of that growth, in a mature state, and properly situated, will bear the most and the finest fruit. A tree left to its natural state, with no pruning but of a few of the lower limbs from the main trunk, will soon exhibit a collection of long naked limbs, without foliage, except near their extremities (see the cut overleaf). In this case fruit will be too thick on what little bearing wood there is, and it should be thinned. But very few cultivators even attend to that. The fruit is consequently small, and it weakens the growth of the young wood above, for next year's fruiting, and thus tree and fruit are perpetually deteriorating. Observe a shoot of young peachwood, you will see near its base, leaf-buds. On the middle there are many blossom-buds, and on the top, leaf-buds again. The tendency of sap is to the extremity. Hence the upper leaf-buds will put out at once. And for their growth, and the maturity of the excessive fruit on the middle, the power of the sap is so far exhausted, that the leaf-buds at the base do not grow. Hence when the fruit is removed, nothing is left below the terminal shoots, but a bare pole. This is the condition in which we find most peach-trees.