On the Native Forests of Aberdeenshire. 85^ 



formality of an overcrowded one can ever present, and a short de- 

 lay would be thus in the end amply compensated. 



Nor in point of shelter would a thin plantation be exposed to any 

 comparative deficiency. It is not while the trees are yet very 

 young that they stand much in need of shelter ; but only after 

 they have attained a considerable height, to expose them to the 

 power of the wind, as is quite evident from their thriving well, for 

 a few years, in lofty and exposed situations, where they afterwards 

 fail to come to any considerable size or value ; and by the time 

 that a plantation, containing 300 trees in a Scotch acre, attained a 

 height of 15 or 20 feet, it is more than probable that it would have 

 more power to disperse and break the current of air in a storm than 

 a close planted one, over the even and uniform tops of which the 

 current makes its may with almost equal facility as over a smooth 

 iield, to break, with unmitigated velocity and unbroken volume, 

 into any opening where its power may bie hurtful. Besides all this, 

 the thin planted trees would possess the immense advantage of 

 having got a firm hold of the ground, which, too many examples 

 prove, the trees of the close plantations never attain. 



It is an expedient of very doubtful success to thin too close plan- 

 tations with the axe. If it is had recourse to very early and vigor- 

 ously, some examples that I have noticed seem to prove that it may 

 succeed. But in this case it would be extremely difficult to show 

 what good purpose the supernumerary trees have served, while 

 they have added greatly to the expense, first in planting them and 

 then in cutting them down. If the application of the axe is long 

 delayed, there is the greatest hazard of bringing on the same in- 

 jury by it that arises from the natural death of some of the trees, — ■ 

 that is, exposing the surviving trees to the efi'ect of the wind, which 

 the conditions of their own tall growth and feeble roots unfit them 

 to resist. Besides there are not wanting facts to demonstrate, that, 

 under this system of management, the rotting roots of the trees cut 

 down, are highly injurious to the survivors. I shall state one or 

 two of those that have come under my notice. In this immediate 

 neighbourhood, a considerable number of years ago, the site of an 

 old plantation, then recently cut down, and fuU of decaying fir 

 ■roots, was included within a larger plantation then made, and 

 planted along with it. The young trees speedily died on the site 

 of the old plantation, and it still remains totally bare of wood. In 

 the year 1813, I cut down, in the garden here, a very old and large 

 apple-tree, which produced only a worthless apple. The centre of 

 the root was dug out, but its lateral branches were allowed to re- 

 jnain. The ground that had been occupied by it was thoroughly 

 manured and limed, and included in a division of the garden, which 

 was then filled up with a plantation of gooseberry and red and 

 black currant bushes. A young apple-tree was also planted among 

 these, not very remote from the site of the old one. The bushes 

 and tree prospered well for about six years, and the former got 

 into full bearing ; but in the summer of 1820, just as the crop was 



