Simimer Operations Beneficial to Plantations. 1 9 



pruning, to eradicate tlie evil. Tiiis item in the summer work of 

 tlie forester is still but little understood, and a careful study of 

 the natural history of the many injurious insects which are so very 

 destructive to tree and shrub life, is a branch of the training of young 

 foresters capable of much more development than it has at the- 

 present day attained. On the Continent, the injury done by these and 

 kindred insects during the summer months has been frequently far 

 more severe than in our own country : for example, in the Hartz 

 Forest and other districts, sometimes hundreds of acres of healthy 

 woodlands have been attacked and killed outright by the ravages 

 of the fir tortrix {Tortrix Mrcyniana), rendering, in one single 

 season, the labour and expenditure of years of no avail ! Surely, 

 then, we do not ask too much in craving the utmost attention of our 

 foresters to the destruction of all such insect pests and their larva; in 

 our woodlands during the summer months. 



But while we have thus noticed cursorily the forester's main duties 

 in the 'plantations, so far as the treatment of the trees themselves in 

 3-oung and growing woods is concerned, there are many other ver}' 

 essential matters to engage his attention : for example, in small strips 

 among trees of from two to six feet in height, there is the cutting and 

 carrying away of the grass and undergrowth, so as to admit of a free 

 current of air among the closely drawn stems, thereby preventing 

 ndldew and other bark excrescences, and bleeding, amongst coniferous 

 trees ; also the scouring out and opening up surface drains, and 

 spreading of the cUhris and leaf-mould dug from them over the 

 root area of the adjoining trees ; the trenching and pitting open 

 spaces, and throwing up the soil for aeration previously to the reception 

 of young plants in autumn or spring ; the lifting and transplanting 

 specimen evergreen shrubs and trees, — which is a process, so far as 

 the first-named are concerned, best done about midsummer. There 

 is also the preparation of subjects for prospective transplantation in a 

 year or two afterwards, by cutting round them and filling in fresh 

 earth, thereby inducing a fibrous root-ball, with which the tree maj 

 be moved in safety to its new site. 



Another most important summer operation, which is too frequently 

 left till later in the year, but which can be best performed when 

 the foliage of the wood is densest, is the selection and marking of 

 such trees as ought to be eitlier removed or felled when the proper 

 season arrives. If this be left till the leaves are shed, or even partially 

 so, many an intruder is apt to escape detection for that year, and 

 probably when the next thinning of the plantation comes to be 

 required, the mischief which ought to have been avoided has been done . 



It is perhaps superfluous to notice many of the usual duties requisite 

 during summer in the round of the forester's daily work. These 



