92 STATE IIORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



ing at all from the line of tlie sap vessels in the trunk, hut where the cut is 

 made even with tiie trunk it is soon covered with tlie new woody fibre and 

 bark, and the tree grows on to maturity with unimpaired vigor and soundness. 

 If the limb amputated is large the wound will not heal over completely in a 

 single season. The new wood will form first around the top and sides of the 

 wound, which will soon be completely surrounded by tiie new growth. Mean- 

 time to prevent decay taking hold of any portion of the wound it has beeu 

 found well to cover the wound with something which will protect it. 

 For this purpose coal-tar, a waste product of gas works, has been found 

 superior to the many other preparations which have been used. It has 

 remarkable preservative properties and may be used with equal advantage ou 

 living and dead wood. A single application forms an impervious coating to 

 the wood cells. It produces a sort of instantaneous cauterization and pre- 

 serves from decay wounds caused cither in pruning or by accident. Its odor 

 drives away insects or prevents them from injuring the wood while the wound 

 is healing. After long and expensive experiments the director of tlie parks of 

 the city of Paris has adopted this in preference to all other means of protec- 

 tion. It may be applied with an ordinary paint brush, and one coat is suffi- 

 cient for wounds of ordinary size. When they are exceptionally large a second 

 coat may, after a few years, bo advisable. 



If leaving any portion of an amputated or broken limb endangers decay in 

 the tree and lessens its value for timber, to allow a portion of one or two feet 

 in length to remain, as is often the practice, is much more disastrous. These 

 stumps, cut off from communication with the leaves, the lungs, of the tree, die, 

 " the bark falls off, and the stamps remain like plugs of decaying wood driven 

 into the trunk. In a few years the stumps rot, and decay penetrates to the 

 heart of the tree." Such a tree is soon greatly injured if not destroyed as a 

 timber tree, when a little time spent in judicious and rational pruning would 

 have continued its life for half a century perhaps and added greatly to its 

 commercial value. 



By the system of De Courval and Des Cars, forest trees are so shaped from 

 time to time by pruning that healthy trunks are carried up to a greater height 

 than would otherwise be the case, thus adding to their value as timber, while 

 more room for a remunerative undergrowth of coppice is thus given and the 

 total product of the forest greatly increased. In the i)ractical application of 

 the system it is held that the class of young forest trees, that is those less than 

 forty years old, should be so pruned of their lower branches that th.e trunk 

 Avill equal one-third of the entire height of tlie tree, and the head should be 

 elongated ovoid in form, tiie lower branches left being more or less shortened 

 in for this purpose. Middle-aged trees, or those between forty and eighty 

 years of age, should have thin trunks, equal to about two-fifths of the total 

 height and the head sliould be made to assume a somewhat rounder form than 

 that given to the younger trees. In the old trees, eighty years and upwards, 

 the trunk should nearly equal one-half the total height, and the head be still 

 more rounded, and at all times decaying and dead branches should be carefully 

 removed. 



tSucli, without undertaking to go into the minute details of operation, is the 

 system of De Courval and Des Cars. It commends itself at once as a rational 

 system, and ample experience in Europe proves its great value. It is simple 

 and intelligible and may be put in practice successfully by any one. The 

 ^lassachusetts Society has made a very important contribution to practical 

 forestry in securing the translation and publication of Des Cars's treatise. 



