252 REPORT ON THE GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF PLANTATIONS. 



Oaks of this age having the same soil and situation should have 

 been at least on an average one-third more value, except upon a 

 few spots where the soil is unsuitable. Most of the soil is suit- 

 able to the growth of ash, which thrives, but, like the oak, is very- 

 deficient in branches, and in value only about two-thirds of what 

 might have been expected. A few specimens of sweet chestnut 

 are also to be met with, being mostly on the extreme margin of 

 the plantation ; they are better grown than the general crop of 

 hardwoods, but the soil, and especially the climate, being unsuit- 

 able, they are not likely ever to become valuable trees, in conse- 

 quence of the heartwood becoming ring-shaken. What has been 

 said of the ash almost equally applies to the elm, save that the 

 soil is less adapted to the growth of the latter than the former, 

 which requires both a richer and drier soil to attain perfection. 



The plantation is at present sufficiently thin, as it has always 

 been since the writer became acquainted with it. Yet the hard- 

 woods will never attain the dimensions, nor survive to the age they 

 otherwise would have done, had they been allowed to develop 

 themselves when young by extending their roots and branches, 

 nor will the crop as a whole ever be so profitable to the proprietor 

 as it otherwise would have been under a different system of 

 management. The best skill in future management can never 

 restore it, seeing that the evil consists almost entirely in tlie 

 deficiency of branches — a circumstance to which little impor- 

 tance is generally attached, but wherein coiisists the principal 

 cause of success or failure in the cultivation of forest trees, more 

 especially in reference to the age of the tree when the branches 

 have been checked. Two adjacent trees having an equal weight 

 of branches are often found to be in very opposite conditions as 

 to vigour and growth, yet in both cases the trunks will have the 

 same proportions to the branches weight for weight, and the for- 

 mation and development of the trees will be in every way alike, 

 viewed externally. In one case the tree probably retained all its 

 necessary branches, say till thirty years' growth, at which period 

 the trees in the plantation were allowed to close. The lower 

 branches were then checked, but the tree having already spread 

 its roots far and wide, goes on growing rapidly, while the branches, 

 except near the top, are held in check. In the other case the 

 branches were checked in infancy, as in the plantation now de- 

 scribed, at the time the trees should have been growing freely 

 and forming a valuable trunk, its growth is stinted, the annual 

 layers of wood upon the trunk are small, the roots through which 

 the tree is supported are few in number, of a penetrating rather 

 than of a spreading nature, liable to early decay, to which the 

 tree itself also succumbs at an early age. 



This plantation is regarded by some as a model one, perfect 

 almost in every respect, not even allowing that there is a de- 



