THINNING AND PRUNING. 23 



never sufficient to form a shapely tree, is left alone. The same 

 thing takes place in beech groves. Ten or twenty times as 

 many plants spring up as can be sustained. They go on 

 together vegetating, but hardly growing. I know several in- 

 stances of beech woods, which have made no perceptible pro- 

 gress for twenty years. These are the most striking cases ; 

 but forests of other trees are almost constantly, if left to them- 

 selves, affected in a similar manner. 



The remedy is obvious. Every year, from the first, they 

 need to be thinned. For the first few years, the plants removed 

 are of no value except for transplantation or fuel. Afterwards, 

 they are of use, in innumerable ways ; the young cedars, larches, 

 and chestnuts, for stakes and poles ; hickories for walking-sticks ; 

 oaks and ashes for basket-work ; lever- wood and hoop-ash for 

 whip-stocks and levers ; all of the five latter for hoops. The 

 products of the thinning will thus obviously far more than re- 

 pay the labor, even if this were not necessary for the welfare of 

 the remaining trees. 



THINNING AND PRUNING. 



The principle on which pruning and thinning should be con- 

 ducted, is a very plain and intelligible one. It is, that every 

 tree and every branch should be allowed to have an ample sup- 

 ply of air and light. When, therefore, two trees are so near, 

 that their branches extensively intermingle, one should be re- 

 moved; and, generally, it should be that one which is much 

 taller or shorter than the neighboring trees. 



In pruning, that branch should be shortened which encroaches 

 on other branches of its own or another tree. It should not be 

 cut off close to the stem, as, in that case, the wound will be long 

 in healing, and the root* which supplied the branch, being left 

 useless, will wholly or partly perish, and, by its decay, will 



* " It is almost universally found, that a large branch corresponds to a large root, 

 and the reverse ; and this is true, whether the root, placed in favorable circum- 

 stances, determines the growth of the branch above it, or the branch, propitiously- 

 situated, causes the growth of its corresponding root." — De Candolle, Organography 

 Vegetale, Tom. I., p. 162. 



