On Pruniui^ and Thinning Forest Tires 



185 



health and beauty of the plant. AVe suppose 

 these gentlemen have some principle to guide 

 them in their amputations ; although we con- 

 fess that the only thing of the kind which we 

 could ever extract was a well-defined and 

 fixed idea that nobody knew anything about 

 pruning but themselves. Of such vague prin- 

 ciples is this, which one may often hear ap- 

 plied to the Deodar — that by " cutting in" the 

 lower branches, more strength will be thrown 

 into the leader. According to our reading of 

 nature, this is a vicious mistake. Every ampu- 

 tation must and does diminish the general 

 vigour of the plant or animal. In truth, the 

 occasions where pruning is advantageous are 

 so rare, that it would be better that the forester 

 should have to go home for his knife every 

 time that it is to be used, than that he should 

 be constantly exposed to the temptation of 

 using it by carrying it handy in his pocket. 

 There is not the same objection to the axe, 

 provided it be distinctly understood that he 

 lays it nowhere but at the root of the trees. 



But suppose a branch to be injured or to 

 decay, shall we not prune it away, then? No 

 — a hundred times, no. If you do, you leave 

 a decayed stump, which becomes a knot and 

 blemish in the timber. If you leave it alone, 

 nature herself throws it off gradually and 

 imperceptibly, encroaching upon it by degrees, 

 until, at last, a great branch will be squeezed 

 out, reduced, at its junction with the trunk, 

 to a diameter no thicker than a crow-quill ; 

 and the year after, the bark W\\\ be grown 

 over, and you could not tell the place where 

 the branch had been ; and still less would 

 you be able to detect it in the timber, were 

 you to cut down the tree and split up the 

 trunk to search for it. 



The process by which this is done is exactly 

 analagous to the dropping of a stag's horn. 

 Everybody knows that when the horn is 

 young and sprouting, it is a soft, vascular 

 substance, covered with hair, like the rest 

 of the body, only the hair is softer and finer. 

 The vessels which supply it with nourish- 

 ment course not only through its substance, 

 but in great veins aud arteries along its 

 exterior, which leave their impress on the 

 solid horn in the grooves which we see left 



on the outside. As the internal substances 

 hardens into horn, the vessels inside are 

 choked off and obliterated, but the horn is 

 still supplied with nourishment by the great 

 external vessels, and would go on increasing 

 in size and substance ad infinitum ; or, if cut 

 or torn off, the animal would bleed to death, 

 but for a very beautiful resultant action from 

 the stoppage of the smaller vessels. These 

 being cut off from the interior, spread them- 

 selves to the right and left, and continue 

 their mission of making a horny deposit, by 

 producing it at the base of the horn, the 

 horn so deposited forming the corrugated 

 ring called the burr. This is at first depo- 

 sited in the spaces unoccupied by the great 

 vessels ; but as these spaces are filled up, 

 the deposit imperceptibly encroaches on the 

 vessels, and gradually clasps them tighter 

 and tighter, until they are wholly closed 

 up, and the connexion between the horn 

 and these vessels being entirely severed, 

 and its supply of nourishment so wholly 

 cut off, it naturally drops off by its own 

 weight. 



So the branch which is to be excised by 

 nature has its connexion with the stem 

 gradually cut off by the growth of the sound 

 wood and bark around it. The pressure of 

 the surrounding wood squeezes the base of 

 the branch tighter and tighter, as the forceps 

 of the burr does the vessels of the stag's horn 

 in their bony band, until at last, when it has 

 been thinned away almost to nothing, it 

 squeezes it out with so much force that it 

 starts forth like a pellet with a bound and a 

 smart report. 



It will thus be seen that the stag's horn 

 branches of an old tree have more than the 

 name in common with the real stag's horn of 

 the denizen of the forest. We confess to 

 being of those who have no objection to 

 seeing an occasional white stag's horn branch 

 projecting from the brow of an old tree. It 

 is thoroughly picturesque ; and the man who 

 would prune it off has as little feeling for the 

 beautiful as he has knowledge of forest 

 management. 



Pruning ? we abhor the very name of it in 

 reference to forest trees. There is a society 



