1886.] COUNT BE CARS' BOOK. 627 



COUNT DE GABS' BOOK. 



A DEFENCE OF A CRITICISM. 



MAY I ask for space for a few remarks on Mr. James Farquhar- 

 son's paper at p. 501 ? I agree with Lim that to preserve a 

 tree for its ancestral value and its position in the landscape no 

 device that will prevent decay ought to be despised. 



This is not the main question under consideration. 



Monsieur de Cars' work may become a text-book in a British 

 School of Forestry. Though an amateur, I have delighted in planta- 

 tion work for more than fifty years, have cut ten acres of old oak 

 wood of my own, and have studied the growth of timber in various 

 climates. If there be any truth in my remarks, I trust they will 

 warn foresters against what I take to be erroneous directions con- 

 tained in the manual of pruning under consideration. 



The fallacy I wished to point out is as stated. Tlie wound is 

 never healed. The dead surface is only covered over with living wood. 



Mr, Farquharson : " True, but only so when the branch is 

 previously dead, and so dead that the cutting off of it level to the 

 trunk does not reach the quick wood of the trunk." 



Here I join issue, and contend that the cutting off of a living 

 branch kills the surface of the wound left on the trunk. The sap 

 ceases to flow through it, it therefore dies, except where the bark of 

 the trunk surrounds it. I do not look upon all branches as being 

 dead before they are cut from the tree. The act of cutting otf a 

 branch kills the surface left, and it is incorrect to speak of its 

 healing over. Coal-tar may preserve the dead surface from decay ; 

 it cannot restore tlie circulation of sap, and give it life. No union 

 takes place between the old dead and the new living wood which 

 covers it. 



I have watched the covering over of large wounds for many years, 

 which were made in oak and ash trees when a road was altered in 

 a gentleman's park, and saw the death of a very fine ash tree 

 caused by a wound less than 20 inches across, carefully planed 

 off and kept painted, and cemented after decay began in spite of 

 paint. The wound was about 5 feet from the ground. Decay 

 went down into the root, and killed the tree about thirty years after 

 the branch was cut off. 



The surface of large wounds on beech always decay before the 

 wound is " healed," so far as I have observed. 



I quite agree with my critic that the " principle cannot be estab- 

 lished," that large wounds can be made without injury to the tree. 



