628 COUNT BE CARS' BOOK. [Feb. 



He passes over my dift'erence with the author, p. 576. 



I adhere to what I said at p. 395 of your number for October 

 last. 



Xo architect would pass a piece of oak which had complete 

 severance of its tissues, even where the surface has been preserved 

 from decay by one or more coats of coal-tar. A wound 20 inches 

 wide would take more than twenty years to be covered over with 

 new wood, and thus would require more than one coat of tar to 

 preserve it. 



" The diagram clearly shows that cutting a branch off in a line 

 with the trunk, carries the defect in the timber well into the heart 

 of the tree." 



The defect consists in the timber having one part of it severed 

 from another, for the whole size of the branch wliich has been 

 pruned off. 



Suppose a piece of oak timber from a tree that had a large 

 branch cut off was wanted for church work, furniture, or any pur- 

 pose, would an architect pass it with its substance severed one 

 part from the other? for the dead surface never joins with the living 

 wood which covers it. 



The same remark applies to the next paragraph quoted by niy 

 critic. 



He afterwards says, " Xo sane person, possessed of even the 

 crudest notions of pruning, would ever think of removing two 

 such branches at once." 



How very insane the writer of the work in question must be, 

 for he says, p. 649, it became necessary to make seven wounds from 

 10 to 20 inches wide on an oak tree 200 years old, and there is 

 nothing to show they were not all made at the same time. Tlie 

 diagram at p. 406 must be a very extreme case if not an imaginary 

 one. I saw none such in the ten acres of oak wood I cut down. 



An article in your December number, " Close Woods or Open," 

 shows, p. 485, that " of the £20,000,000 worth of timber which is 

 yearly imported into the United Kingdom, by far the greater part 

 has been produced in natural forest. The excellent timber reaching us 

 from Scandinavia, Eussia, and Canada has seldom known the fostering 

 care of any forester." 



Pruning is an expensive process, and as we get our finest 

 timber, freest from knots, from unpruned forests, may not more 

 natural and injurious effects be produced by keeping woods close ? 



Xursing even in hospitals may be overdone, giving the patient no 

 rest and not leaving enough to nature. The same thing with 

 regard to plantations is one of the causes why they do not pay as 

 well as thev mi^ht be made to. 



