AS APPLICABLE IN PPvACTICAL FORESTIIY. 207 



long nursed, protected, and shaded under a canopy of branches — 

 is it strange, I would again ask, that a change should take place 

 with the roots of the trees, or that the heat of the sun should 

 crystalize the fluids in the roots, and stop the ilow of sap which 

 was wont to nourish the tree ? To this chemical change in the 

 roots I attribute the sickly appearance referred to. 



Another Scots fir phmtation was thinned at about thirty-five 

 years' growth, and had not been thinned during the preceding- 

 fifteen years. After thinning it became sickly and death-like, 

 and but for the important place it occupied in the landscape 

 would have been all cut down. It however was allowed to 

 stand, and after the fourth or fifth year began to assume its 

 natural colour, and is now in a fair state of health. 



After a few years the trees usually recover, as the result of 

 having made new roots suited to their new condition of life ; but 

 while some recover, others go back and perish altogether. 



From the foregoing results, it must appear obvious that thin- 

 ning is a very delicate and precarious operation, and is attended 

 with much danger and risk to a crop of trees. If thinning could 

 be entirely dispensed with, so much the better, and in the case 

 of natural forests, where no artificial thinning has ever taken place, 

 there are to be found many hundreds of acres of wood which 

 no artificial forest or plantation can compare with in point of 

 value. Any one who has exandned the forests on Deeside, on 

 Balmoral, Invercauld, and Mar Estates, or Eothiemurchus, Glen- 

 more, and Abernethy, on Speyside, and many others both at 

 home and abroad, will support that testimony. One piece of a 

 few acres on Eothiemurchus estate is worthy of special notice. 

 When I examined it a few years ago, the trees stood on an 

 average 9 feet apart — some of them as wide as 15 feet, and 

 others as close as 2 feet. The market value of it per acre at the 

 time I saw it, allowing the trees to be all sound — which I am 

 certain they were not — was at least £300 per acre. The ground 

 itself is the poorest possible — a light, sandy gravel, with a crisp 

 dry herbage of heath and moss, certainly not worth over Is. 6d. 

 per acre per annum for grazing purposes. 



The question here arises, How are plantations to be managed 

 that have been so thickly planted as to require thinning to pre- 

 vent the trees from growing up disproportionately small ? The 

 answer is, thin early enough, and complete the operation before 

 the side branches touch each other, and before any of them 

 decay. This is advisable, not only for the preservation of the 

 branches themselves, but in order that no unfavourable change 

 be produced upon the roots of the trees, by admitting a degree of 

 heat and air amongst them to which they have not been accus- 

 tomed, and which they cannot endure. 



In all forest operations by far too little attention is paid to 



