208 ON THINNING PLANTATIONS 



tlie roots of the trees. They are often planted in soil so satur- 

 ated with water that no air can penetrate it, and reach the 

 rootlets — hence the lingering and sickly state the trees remain 

 in for years after being planted ; and it is only after they grow 

 to such a height that the action of the wind upon the trees 

 shakes and loosens the soil that they begin to grow freely. 



Most plantations under thirty years old may be benefited by 

 thinning if the trees have sufticient branches ; but where they 

 have stood so closely together as to destroy their vitality to two- 

 thirds their entire height all hopes of restoring them is at an 

 end, and if any thinning is done in such cases it does not im- 

 prove but injure the crop, by retarding its growth. 



All thinning, I would again repeat, should be commenced 

 before the side branches touch each other, and continued till the 

 trees stand about 8 feet apart, after which they may very safely 

 be handed over to Nature to perfect and complete their growth, 

 the forester meanwliile only to cut and remove dead or sickly 

 trees till the crop is ripe, when it should be cut, cleared, and the 

 ground replanted. 



All that has previously been said about thinning applies 

 only to pine and fir plantations ; and now a few words about 

 hardwoods. 



■ I have an extensive hardwood plantation under my care which 

 had never been thinned up to twenty years old. It consists of 

 oak, ash, elm, beech, sycamore, lime, &c, At the age of twenty 

 it received a moderate thinning, and from that time to the pre- 

 sent (twenty-five years) it has received every possil)le attention. 

 Some of the trees are over 1 foot diameter, but the greater part 

 are not quite 6 inches, and some not even 4. The soil is good, 

 chiefly of a loamy nature, and a good depth. 



The remarkable disparity of growth amongst the trees im- 

 presses one with a desire to know the reason why some are so 

 large and others so small, being all of the same age and grown 

 on the some soil. The explanation is simply this, — Those that 

 were confined, and thereby deprived of their lower branches, are 

 the small ones ; while those that had most room are the largest. 



It is a common impression that hard wooded trees, though 

 denuded of their branches when young, will recover them after 

 being thinned. That such is not the case I have ample proof 

 of; for here there are hundreds of trees as bare as poles, with 

 only a tuft of branches on the top, which have had ample room 

 for many years to develop their side branches, had it been in 

 the order of Nature for them to do so. Some trees — as the oak 

 — do make an effort to reproduce their lateral branches, but 

 Avhen the effort at all succeeds it is at the sacrifice of the top 

 growth, so that what is gained on the one hand is lost on the 

 other. It is very difficult to know how to treat a plantation 



