The copious reports of the fruit crops in the 'Garden' "tell," says that paper, "of sad disasters to Apricot trees, owing to the remarkable season which we have experienced. Branch-dying has been unusually prevalent, and many trees have died outright. Peaches and Nectarines have suffered greatly from blister, and so backward are their fruits that in many places they will never ripen. Pears, though in some cases rusty and cracking, are better this year than Apples, which are generally a thin crop, and the fruit still keeps dropping from the trees. The latter, too, are in some places almost leafless. Cherries, with the exception of Morellos, cracked and rotted on the trees. Even as far north as Durham, the Morello has been better on standards than on walls - a fact worth noting, seeing that, in addition to its fruit, the growth of the tree itself is highly ornamental. Damsons are everywhere reported to be good, and in some places even heavy crops. Next to these stand Victoria and the Orleans, Plums that seldom fail. Nuts are good in many places, but "Walnuts are a failure. All small fruits have been heavy crops, but flavourless; and Gooseberries have been in many places stripped of their leaves by the Gooseberry caterpillar.

Of little known fruits, Helena Gloede Strawberry is spoken of as being a valuable late kind; and Stone's Apple, a local Kentish variety, is reported as being a sort that well deserves more extensive cultivation than it has hitherto received. "Worcester Pearmain, a beautiful Apple, is also stated to be good".

Mr Ralph Carr Ellison, who writes interestingly on woodcraft in the 'Journal of Forestry,' makes some remarks on the subject of pruning that may interest your readers. He says:-

" Let every large branch that is to come off be cut twice and in two places, first a good yard or more above the place where the true amputation is to be made. This in order to get rid of weight, and to prevent rending and splitting near to the stem of the tree. The final cut of any limb, branch, or branchlet should be made just above or outside of the ring-swell or encircling protuberance of bark and wood which surrounds its butt, and so as to leave the ring-swell untouched by the saw. The only instruments that should be used to insure protection of the ring-swell, when a branch is to be amputated, are the saw, the chisel and mallet, and the pocket-knife. All axes, hatchets, bills, and billhooks should be disallowed, after Pontey's excellent advice, - for no workman, however dexterous, can be trusted with an edge instrument to be used by striking. The axe is admirable for felling timber, the adze for dressing it when felled, the light axe and hatchet for ' snedding' small wood or cutting coppice, but none of them are suitable for pruning.

It is perfectly true that the hardihood of our native trees enables them to live through a great deal of hard usage and deplorable tree-surgery, in the way of slicing and scarifying; but the moment you apply the same freaks to tenderer subjects - to Peach and Plum trees, to the finer varieties of Apple and Pear - you meet with your reward in the sudden decline and death of the wounded stem and all its cherished developments in the second or third year, if not in the first, after the audacious operation of cutting away the ring-swell of some considerable branch".

Perhaps the horticultural reader will agree with us that Mr Ellison rather exaggerates the evil of ' cutting away the ring-swell" in the case of fruit-trees. If we are not mistaken, the rule is more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and is not so much as noticed by authorities on fruit culture. To leave the ring-swell of some "considerable branch " would, in the case of some stone fruits, be to leave a knob or protuberance which, decaying, would be very apt to produce gumming, whereas if cut clean away it would heal over perfectly. In the same journal we notice an experienced forester, writing on the same subject, takes no account of the "ring-swell," but gives directions for cutting branches off close to the trunk. Mr Carr writes pleasantly and instructively "on the functions of the lower branches of trees," but we are afraid sometimes hypothetically as well. Speaking on this topic, he tells us that " the wisdom in nature is never at rest till it has done something to shade or to shield the long trunk from sunshine, wind, and evaporation. Cut away these lovely-descending curtains, and Nature will clothe the trunk with grey lichens on the windy-side, and with green mosses on the leeward.

Scrape off these too, and she will bid the hapless tree bear flower and seed in reckless and exhausting profusion while yet it has strength to do so. It will scatter its seed upon the winds, to propagate its kind far and wide; and then it will gradually decline upon your hands, and fall a prey to canker or to fungus, to lightning or to tempest".

Mr Ellison verges on nonsense here. "Nature" does not do the things he tells - at all events, with the object Mr Ellison believes and tries to make others believe. In the first place, she produces lichens on trees in situations where they are not required to protect the tree from either wind or sunshine - that is, in the densest and most sheltered parts of the forest, and where it is moistest; and, secondly, she, as a rule, refuses to produce them where they should be most needed, one would think - that is, upon trees in exposed situations; and lastly, it is difficult to see how a clothing of moss or lichen is going to shelter a tree from wind and prevent it being blown down, just as it is to understand the connection between the scraping off of the lichen and the moss, and the consequent destruction of the tree by "lightning or tempest".

A correspondent of a contemporary, and a gardener, who hails from the Land's End direction, where witchcraft and superstition still survive, as one frequently sees by the papers, states that he "plants out forced Strawberries after the balls of earth are pummelled as hard as bricks, and tramps the ground firmly about them after they are planted," and asks why newly-planted young Vines "should not be treated in the same way." It maybe answered that there is at present no law for the protection of employers who happen to have gardeners who entertain such notions; but in the meantime, probably, a few cheap copies of Thomson's book on ' The Vine' might be gratuitously, and with great advantage, circulated in the locality from which the above inquiry emanates. "Pummelling" pot - Strawberries and pot-Vines "as hard as bricks," and planting both out in a soil "pummelled" to the same consistency, is an idea that must entertain Grape-growers in the north hugely.

• Reader.