44 REPORT ON THE PRUNING OF FOREST TREES. 



ance, the trunk will be found comparative!} 7 slender, only a few 

 feet high, with numerous leaders ail striving for the mastery, the 

 entire of its immense head and dwarfish stems being almost value- 

 less either for wood or bark. The sight of such a disproportioned, 

 ill-growing " monarch of the forest," is fitted to call forth regret 

 and pity, rather than admiration ; and it may truly be said that 

 it has expended its strength in vain and for nothing. The period 

 of its most vigorous growth, during which it formed the largest 

 circles or zones of wood, is past, and it may fairly be considered 

 to have attained a permanent bent or set, which no subsequent 

 care and attention can alter. But a few well-timed applications 

 of the forester's knife would have kept these leaders in check, and 

 reserved their nourishment for the main stem, which ought to 

 have been preserved free and distinct, and only such branches 

 allowed as were really essential for the full development of the 

 trunk. In such circumstances, a stately, healthy, profitable growth 

 would have been the result, measuring many feet of excellent 

 timber, and yielding a proportionate quantity of superior bark. 



The elm, also, if not controlled and directed in its growth, is 

 apt to throw off branches of nearly equal thickness with the 

 main stem. These, if suffered to remain, continue to draw the 

 sap more and more away from the trunk, and prevent its attain- 

 ing a proper bulk, and so decreasing the value of the wood ; they 

 also render the tree top heavy, and interfere with the functions of the 

 roots. They likewise offer a greater resistance to the blast than the 

 strength of the tree is able to overcome, and are liable to be torn 

 and broken by the storm, if indeed they do not cause the tree to be 

 laid prostrate. All such risk and actual damage can be prevented 

 by timely pruning, reducing the plant to proper form, and check- 

 ing its tendency to produce a redundancy of arms, which the trunk 

 cannot possibly maintain, enabling it to husband its strength for 

 the promotion of its own vigour and to mature its wood more 

 rapidly, and in the shape most likely to be useful and profitable. 

 If it be true that " the boy is the father of the man," it is no 

 less true that the plant is the father of the tree. It is the tree in 

 miniature, and indicates its disposition at an early stage of its 

 growth. By a cursory examination, we might be able to pro- 

 nounce what that tendency is, and so regulate, to a certain ex- 

 tent, the amount of knife manipulation required when planting 

 out. It is for want of proper attention being bestowed in the first 

 or early stages of planting operations that so much labour and 

 loss is afterwards entailed, and which might easily be obviated, 

 and a uniform, safe, and simple system of thinning and pruning 

 adopted. The importance of having such a regular system of 

 management established it is impossible to estimate. 



But when young plantations have been neglected for some 

 time, and attention is afterwards drawn to the omission, the 



