No matter what the tree is, the poplar of France, or
the brookside willow or oak coppice of England, or the chestnuts or
mulberries of Italy, all are interesting when being pruned, or when
pruned just lately.
A friend once consulted me casually about a
picture on which he was at work, and complained that a row of trees
in it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate enough to
be able to help him by saying: "Prune them freely and put a
magpie's nest in one of them," and the trees became interesting at
once. People in trees always look well, or rather, I should say,
trees always look well with people in them, or indeed with any
living thing in them, especially when it is of a kind that is not
commonly seen in them; and the measured lop of the bill-hook and,
by and by, the click as a bough breaks and the lazy crash as it
falls over on to the ground, are as pleasing to the ear as is the
bough-bestrewn herbage to the eye.
To what height and to what slender boughs do not these hardy
climbers trust themselves. It is said that the coming man is to be
toeless. I will venture for it that he will not be toeless if
these chestnut-pruning men and women have much to do with his
development. Let the race prune chestnuts for a couple of hundred
generations or so, and it will have little trouble with its toes.
Of course, the pruners fall sometimes, but very rarely.
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