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Tlic Country Gcntlciruiiis Magazine 



of plants ; therefore, if we find the trees 

 growing near each other, and foresee that 

 by-and-bye they will be too close for the air 

 to circulate freely, or for plenty of light to 

 reach the lower branches, we must then cut 

 and make room for these necessary elements 

 to penetrate. 



If any one should say that there is no use 

 in expatiating on this subject, and that every 

 intelligent planter is already convinced of the 

 necessity of air and room in plantations, our 

 reply is that the whole question lies in the 

 meaning attached to these words. Every one 

 admits that air and room are necessary, but 

 what one considers plenty of both, another 

 will regard as absence of either. Our object 

 is to try to shew what a sufficiency of light and 

 air really is. Men generally begin by planting 

 so close, that the young trees speedily touch 

 each other. A prior i^ there may be no objec- 

 tion to close planting at first, if people remem- 

 bered to thin before the trees do touch each 

 other. The chief objection to it is the cliance of 

 their forgetting or neglecting to do so in time. 

 They usually delay thinning until the trees 

 have made such progress that the thinnings 

 are worth something, at least enough to pay 

 the expense of making them. After the first 

 thinning (often without any thinning at all), 

 they are allowed to grow until they are 15 or 

 20 years old, and are irretrievably ruined. 

 The trees are drawn up into long thin poles, 

 with nought but a tuft of foliage struggling for 

 breath at the top ; and no treatment in the 

 world will ever restore these trees to the con- 

 dition in which they would have been had 

 they been properly treated, or even to the 

 most distant approach to a good tree. 



Now, there are two ways in which the trees 

 are injured by this treatment : there is first 

 the physical want of air to breathe, and next 

 the mechanical injury from actual contact. 

 As to the first, we all know that plants breathe 

 as well as animals : that during the day they 

 absorb carbonic acid and give out oxygen ; 

 and during the night reverse the process, and 

 absorb oxygen and give out carbonic acid ; so 

 that the presence of plants in rooms is health- 

 ful during the day and the reverse at night. 

 Not so much so, however, as is generally sup- 



posed — any evil effects being easily obviated 

 by a little attention to ventilation at night. If, 

 then, they are smothered up by growing too 

 close together, the leaves which fail to receive 

 a due proportion of oxygen drop off, and the 

 plant is suffocated indirectly from want of 

 air, and directly from want of leaves by which 

 to breathe. This is the physical effect of 

 Avant of air. 



What is the mechanical effect of the trees 

 being so close together that the branches of 

 one tree touch those of its neighbour? At 

 first we see nature in a beautiful way trying 

 to avoid the contact. As the ends of the 

 branches near each other, they appear in- 

 stinctively to fear and dread the approaching 

 contact ; they leave their natural horizontal 

 or oblique direction and grow upwards more 

 directly. But by-and-bye comes a fine warm, 

 moist, growing season ; the branches push 

 out on every side, and at last, in spite of all 

 their efforts to avoid it, the ends of the twigs 

 of the neighbouring trees do touch each other. 

 The wind dashes them backward and for- 

 ward against each other, and the leaves are 

 gradually rubbed off The twigs and leaves 

 on each tree itself are so beautifully arranged 

 round their axes, that it is rarely that any of 

 them injure each other by friction ; but it 

 is very different with trees growing near 

 them and moving in the opposite direction. 

 As soon as this takes place, the rubbed 

 branches are doomed if help does not come. 

 What is it that makes an injury to the lungs, 

 whether caused by a wound or disease, so 

 difficult to heal? It is their unceasing 

 motion — never, while life endures, at rest 

 for a single moment; no sooner does the 

 curative process of nature begin to unite or 

 spread a film of fresh skin over the injured 

 part, than a fresh breath is drawn and the 

 uniting surface again torn asunder.' So with 

 the ends of these branches : they are con- 

 stantly in motion, unless, perchance, in some 

 calm or sultry day, whose duration is too 

 brief to allow the curative process here 

 needed by them (that is, the development of 

 new buds and leaves) to take place. As 

 soon, therefore, as the twigs of the trees begin 

 to approach each other, then is the time to 



