200 ON THE CAUSE OF KINGSHAKE IN TREES; 



arboriculturists are opposed to thinning a plantation, while others 

 deem it highly advisable, and absolutely necessary, for the 

 ultimate benefit of the plantation. I consider it is the best 

 treatment we can give a hardwood plantation, to give plenty of 

 room, and should any branch have a tendency to grow to undue 

 proportions let it be foreshortened at once, otherwise the planta- 

 tion will suffer from the causes I have enumerated, and ring- 

 shake be the result. 



Thus I have found damp ground resting upon porous gravel 

 producing ringshaken timber, — rocky subsoils, irrespective of 

 surface soil, gravelly pan subsoils, no less than rich heavy deep 

 ground, producing the same. The management of the trees 

 having in a majority of cases more or less to do with it ; and in 

 many cases which have come under my own observation neither 

 soil nor the form of the tree had anything to do with it, and did 

 not cause ringshake, the subsoil causing it alone, the nature or 

 form of which prevented or hindered the roots from getting 

 equally distributed round the tree, in some cases only a few main 

 roots supporting the tree. And though never able thoroughly 

 to convince myself, my opinion is that trees whose ligneous 

 tissues are arranged spirally are more frequently ringshaken 

 than those of ordinary form. Felling hardwood trees during 

 severe frost has a tendency to produce ringshake, as well as 

 felling them among rocks or rocky ground. 



EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS.— PROGRESS OF EXPERIMENTS. 

 By Dr Andrew P. Aitken, Chemist to the Society. 



Owing to the extreme severity of the past winter, and to the 

 unfortunate circumstance that the long frost set in before it was 

 expedient to lift the crops upon the Society's experimental 

 stations, it is impossible at this time to give a complete and 

 detailed report of the first season's experiments. Part of the 

 crop is still under snow, and the analytical investigations con- 

 nected with the experiments are only in their first stages of 

 progress. As, however, there may exist a desire on the part of 

 many interested in those experiments to know what has been done, 

 a few remarks, introductory to the general scheme of experiments, 

 and supplementary to what is to be found recorded in the "Pro- 

 ceedings" (vol. X. Appendix A. 11, 19; vol. xi. Appendix A, 14, 28), 

 may be found worthy of perusal. The object which the Society has 

 in instituting these experiments is to answer some of the more 

 pressing questions which are being asked by farmers regarding 

 the various forms of manures. Manures are esteemed, and even 

 valued commercially, according as they contain ingredients in 

 certain modes of combination^ though it is by no means 



