ARBORICULTURE. 357 



nursery rows, should be planted on their timber sites three feet 

 apart every way, it being understood at the same time that the 

 soil is thin, light, or sandy, and that the slit or holing-in method 

 of planting is used. But should the soil have been prepared by 

 ploughing and trenching, and be in a clean fallow state, the me- 

 dium distance of four feet, or three and a half feet, if the species 

 of trees to be planted are exclusively of the fir or pine tribe, 

 will be the most proper. Trees of the age now alluded to will 

 vary in size from nine to twenty inches in height, exclusive of 

 some species of poplar, elm, &c, which grow faster than the 

 generality of forest trees. In well-prepared land of a deeper sur- 

 face soil than the above, plants from eighteen to twenty-four 

 inches in height of the fir tribes may be planted with advantage ; 

 and deciduous trees, as the oak, chesnut, elm, &c, from three to 

 four feet in height, may be planted at the distance of five feet 

 apart. In the last case a return of profits from thinnings will be 

 obtained at least two years earlier than from transplanted seed- 

 lings, under the like circumstances of soil. Trees planted as 

 nurses for assisting the progress of those intended for timber are 

 of quick growth, and in the course of from seven to twelve years 

 will have attained to a size fit for the purposes of fencing, or to be 

 used as poles, coopers' ware, &tc, according to local demand. 

 When the nurse trees have arrived at this stage of growth, they 

 will require to be partially thinned, to make room for the timber 

 trees, or principals of the plantation, as they are termed. When- 

 ever the branches of the former interfere with those of the latter, 

 no time should be lost in remedying the evil, by pruning the 

 nurse trees, or cutting them down. If the different operations of 

 planting have been judiciously performed, the value of the trees 

 thinned out at this period, will cover the rent of the land, with 

 compound interest on the capital expended in planting it. Hence 

 the importance of nurse trees, and the propriety of furnishing the 

 ground at first with a sufficient number of young plants to be cut 

 down and taken away periodically, until the principal timber trees 

 have attained to maturity. In poor soils, where the original out- 

 lay of capital and the rent of the land are both small, the expen 

 diture will be covered by the periodical crop of thinnings, and 



