378 SYLVA AMERICANA. 



in taking off branches close to the stem or bole, in circumstances 

 where the saw cannot be freely used from the upright direction 

 of the branch, or the situation of the adjoining branches. Such 

 are the manuals of forest pruning. It may be justly said that in 

 no one process of the culture of forest trees is a just knowledge 

 of vegetable physiology, or that of the structure and functions of 

 the organs of vegetable life of more importance than in this one 

 of pruning, which directly and especially applies to the assisting 

 and directing, as well as the checking, of these functions in the 

 production of wood as in forest trees, and in that as well as of 

 flowers and fruit in garden trees. 



A timber tree, as before observed, is valued for the length, 

 straightness, and solidity of its stem. Judicious pruning tends 

 greatly to assist nature in the formation of the stem in this perfect 

 state. In natural forests, boles or stems possessing properties of 

 the most valuable kind are found, where no pruning, trenching, 

 or any other process of culture ever was applied to the rearing 

 of the trees. It should not, however, be concluded from this 

 circumstance that these processes are of little value. If we 

 examine the growth of trees, when left to the unassisted efforts of 

 nature by the neglect of pruning and thinning, we find that but a 

 small number only, on any given space of planted ground, attain 

 to perfect maturity, compared to those which never arrive at any 

 value but for fuel. The like results, though varying according 

 to local advantages, are exhibited in the produce of self-planted 

 forests. Hence, instead of an average of two or three perfect 

 trees on any given space (suppose an acre) left by the unassisted 

 efforts of nature, we shall have from forty to three hundred 

 perfect trees, according to the species of timber, by the judicious 

 application of art in the preparation of the soil and the after 

 culture of the trees, and probably on soils, too, which, without 

 such assistance, could never have reared a single tree. 



But though judicious pruning greatly assists in the production 

 of a tall, straight bole, free from blemish, yet unless those 

 circumstances before mentioned are favorable, as a vigorous, 

 healthy constitution of the plant in its seedling stage of growth, 

 transplantation to its timber sites at a proper age, and a soil 



