The Fruit Garden; by P. Barry, of the Mount-Hope Nurseries, Rochester, N. Y. One vol. 8vo., 398 pages. (Charles Scribner, New-York.)

Since the issue of the first edition of our work on Fruit-Trees, in 1845, twelve editions of that work have been published and disseminated in every part of this country, and in some parts of Europe - and the sale continues unabated to this day. Since that time various smaller works have been issued from the press, and have also met with an extensive sale. The present volume, by Mr. Barry, the well-known Rochester nurseryman, has the last and freshest contributions to the subject, and is, we think, the best of the smaller works. It does not profess to be a comprehensive work on Pomology, to which the reader is to look for complete descriptions of Fruits, since it only offers brief abridged descriptions of select varieties. It takes, however, a different and distinct ground from the other works, namely, to teach "the art of planting fifty trees on an acre of ground, and bringing them into a fruitful state in four or five years." In other words, it is written to be the hand-book of amateurs who wish to cultivate with care and skill, a few fruit trees, in a fruit garden, rather than orchard cultivators, whose operations are pursued on a wider scale, and with less labor bestowed on the detail of their operations in possession of works already published - but the author explains these operations afresh, in a concise, graphic, and agreeable manner.

The point in which Mr. Barry's work mainly differs from other works published in this country, and in which it is a decided improvement upon them, is one that we naturally expected, both from its title, and its later date. We mean, of course, Pruning. Most of the works on Fruits, hitherto, have been intended mainly, either for orchard planters who allow their trees to take the natural form of standards, in which pruning is a matter rather to be avoided than insisted upon, in this climate; or else for cultivators with smaller space, whose limited time and means does not permit them to indulge in any of the special refinements of the art of horticulture, in the way of training or pruning trees - the methods generally practiced in the gardens of Europe, where labor is so vastly cheaper. The fact, too, that almost all the fruits of temperate climates bear excellent crops in many parts of the United States, with the simple conditions of a good soil and abundant air and light, has had a tendency to retard the introduction of what may be called the refinements of fruit culture as practiced abroad - viz: the pruning and training fruit trees as dwarfs, standards, pyramids, espaliers, and a dozen fanciful modes, some of which greatly add to their productiveness and value, while others are highly ornamental features in the fruit garden.

The great value of these improved modes of training and pruning, is, indeed, not for the million, who plant fruit trees solely for the sake of getting fruit, with the least possible expenditure of labor or money on their part, but for the few who wish to get superior fruit by superior and improved modes of cultivation, and who take that kind of personal interest in their fruit garden, that makes daily attention to the growth of a tree, a source of continual pleasure and satisfaction.

No horticulturists at the present time, understand the art of pruning so thoroughly as the French, as we had ample opportunity of ascertaining by personal inspection last year. Mr. Barry's enthusiam on the subject of dwarf trees, pyramids and espaliers, was awakened by the same sight, and he accordingly gives his readers ample details, based on his own observation of the whole system of "pinching," and the cutting back of the young shoots - which constitutes the pith and marrow of the French mode - a system which we are forced to say is the best possible mode of pruning, since it directs the subject in the way it should go by means of foreseeing its future capacities and character, instead of allowing all growth to go at random generally, but occasionally coming down on the poor creature with a terrible onslaught of saw and knife, to the permanent injury of the consti-stution of the tree.

Our amateur readers who have carefully read the previous volumes of this Journal, are acquainted with the secrets of the pinching and shortening-back modes of pruning which lie at the bottom of the French practice, but they will also find Mr. Barry's work a most convenient hand-book of reference, when busy with the details of the art.

The author of the Fruit Garden very properly places M. Dubreuil, the French Professor of Arboriculture, at the head of the masters of the art of pruning, at the present day, and quotes at length from that author the following admirable expose of his principles of pruning, which we copy here for the perusal and study of our readers interested in this subject:

"The theory of the pruning of fruit trees rests on the following six general princi"I. The vigor of a tree, subject to pruning, depends, in a great measure, on the equal distribution of sap in all its branches.

In fruit trees abandoned to themselves, the sap is equally distributed in the different parts without any other aid than nature, because the tree assumes the form most in harmony with the natural tendency of the sap.*

"But in those submitted to pruning, it is different; the forms imposed on them, such as espalier, pyramid, vase, etc, change more or less the normal direction of the sap, and prevent it from taking the form proper to its species. Thus nearly all the forms given to trees require the development of ramifications more or less numerous, and of greater or less dimensions at the base of the stem. And, as the sap tends by preference towards the summit of the tree, it happens that, unless great care be taken, the branches at the base become feeble, and finally dry up, and the form intended to be obtained disappears, to be replaced by the natural form, that is a stem or a trunk with a branching head. It is then indispensable, if we wish to preserve the form we impose upon trees, to employ certain means, by the aid of which the natural direction of the sap can be changed and directed towards the points where we wish to obtain the most vigorous growth. To do this we must arrest vegetation in the parts to which the sap is carried in too great abundance, and on the contrary favor the parts that do not receive enough.