About this time last spring I had a visit from an Indiana farmer. He was a quaint looking old gentleman clad in home-spun "jeans," and with a profusion of black hair reaching down between his shoulders. I looked for nothing new to come out of that man; but as these warm spring days bring the pruning fever out of us country people, so this old gentleman found me slashing away among my young apple trees. He stood it like a hero until I had ruined the shape of one row of trees, when, bless his soul, how mildly he put it - first a suggestion that "that" limb might come out, then "if it was me I would take that one off." "Don't you think the tree would be better balanced if one of those two parallel limbs was taken out? " For once in my life I expressed no opinion but obeyed instructions, and when I stepped back and looked at that tree, it " gleamed like a diamond." Was it possible so little labor could create such symmetry? In about the time it had taken me to spoil one row, he perfected the rest of my orchard.

I asked him if he could teach me to do that other sort of thing. In his answer he affected no great amount of knowledge, but said it would take him about 100 years to be able to tell with any degree of certainity, what effect pruning the twig would have upon the matured tree. This was a little more time than I cared to devote to the subject; but this I did learn from him. You must first have in your mind the picture of a perfect tree, and then prune each tree to conform as nearly as possible to the proportions of that picture, leaving buds to produce limbs where they are wanting. But the great point in his design, to my notion, is his picture. He thought a perfect apple tree should have one main branch running up the center, and the other limbs forming as nearly as possible a tulip shape about the main stem.

This may not be the most approved form, but I never could trim under the directions of a book, while I can conform the most neglected tree to this design, and it lets the light and air into the tree with as much uniformity as any other design with which I am familiar. Every limb that points inward, and all those that touch others, should be taken out, and where two limbs form a very acute angle at the crotch, one should be removed as they are liable to split when loaded with fruit. - Cor. Farmers' Home Journal.