200 ox THINNING PLANTATIONS 



The length of time which a single tree or crop of trees takes 

 to attain its highest possible value is an important matter, 

 because if one forester can grow a crop of trees as valuable in 

 fifty years as another can in sixty years, then ten years would 

 be thereby gained, which would represent one-sixth of the pro- 

 ducing cost, &c. When all these and other relative matters are- 

 kept distinctly in view, the operations of practical forestry 

 become better understood, and the modes of carrying them out 

 greatly simplified. 



In addition to practical forestry, however, we have sheltering 

 forestry, which consists principally of belts, stripes, groups, and 

 single trees, the object of which is to produce warmth and 

 shelter to animals in the fields, and to dry and ameliorate the 

 climate. This branch of forestry is indeed more an auxiliary to 

 farming, and a means of making farms pay, than that of producing 

 profitable returns from planting. Indeed, trees grown either as 

 small groups or narrow belts will not fulfil the conditions laid 

 down for practical forestry. 



We have als3 ornamental forestry, differing from both the 

 other two in almost every respect. Ornamental forestry comprises 

 hedge-row trees, certain lines and groups distributed over the 

 landscape, and single trees so grown, either alone or combined, 

 as to produce certain well-known but indescribable effects. 



Experimental forestry is also another branch which embraces 

 the piuetum, shrubbery, and certain departments of the nursery. 

 It is designed to grow trees of new importation, to see what they 

 will attain to, find out how certain species of trees enjoy or dis- 

 like each other's presence, how certain trees thrive in different 

 kinds of soil, &c. These are all interesting, instructive, and 

 important branches of forestry, and should each be studied and 

 practised separately, and in accordance with their importance 

 and worth. 



In this paper, however, the writer intends to confine himself 

 exclusively to that branch of practical forestry termed thinning. 

 If thinning were rightly understood and properly attended to, 

 pruning would be almost unnecessary, for it is either from 

 superabundance of room on the one hand, or too little on the 

 other, or from having stood too closely together at one stage of 

 their growth and receiving too much thinning at another, that pro- 

 duces most of the necessities for pruning. I shall endeavour 

 briefly to show how far and to what extent thinning is 

 necessary to produce the desired results of practical forestry. I 

 have stated (be it observed) that quantity is required — I mean 

 quantity of timber, not number of trees, for while it is true that 

 two sixpences are of value equal to one shilling it does not 

 follow that two small trees are of equal value to one large one. 

 Two trees containing 20 feet each may be of as much value as 



