Sitmuicr Operations Benejicial to Plantations. 13 



is desirous of adapting to his particular requirements or wishes, will 

 in his hands, shortly become a dead object. To obviate the risk of 

 such treatment, it will be found by every practical tree-lover 

 that the careful study of life-action in the forest at its most busy 

 period is one of the most salutary methods ; and while accurate 

 observation, and experimental operations in forest work during the 

 season of the sun's greatest glory and nature's richest garniture, will 

 afford the higliest interest and intellectual enjoyment to any one 

 whose heart is in his profession, he will also find that by so studying 

 the conditions under which tree and timber development proceeds best 

 and most satisfactorily, such lessons, drawn from the flowing sap of 

 Nature herself, will be of the utmost value to him in the practice 

 and pursuit of his daily forest routine duties throughout the whole 

 year. 



The calendar of operations which usually accompanies our ordinary 

 handbooks of forestry, deals principally with the summer months by 

 directing attention to nursery rows and seedling beds, and such-like 

 well-known essential but minor duties in the profession of the 

 forester ; but they do not sufficiently call attention to the work to 

 be done ivithin the woodland itself, — with the very trees themselves, in 

 fact, — a point, in our opinion, equally, if not more important than any 

 other in the varied range of details which it falls to the interesting 

 occupation of the forester to consider and perform. 



It is not, therefore, with such ordinary and minor duties as the 

 details of nursery work that we propose to deal in this paper, 

 although these very properly fall within the category of summer 

 duties ; but many of them, such as hoeing, weeding seedling beds, 

 and keeping them clean, thinning, &c., may well be deputed to the 

 role of any ordinary labourer ; while the questions of greater import- 

 ance, viz., the care and supervision of the woods themselves, and the 

 operations in them, had better occupy the undivided attention of the 

 professional forester. Unfortunately, in this country there is a pro- 

 pensity to set any mere ordinary labourer to do forest work ; and such 

 duties of the summer as we have indicated, are frequently delegated 

 to any unskilled hand, while the work of the practical forester is 

 confined to odd nursery jobs, barking timber, &c., to a far greater 

 extent than is at all warrantable; and we would simply reverse these 

 positions, and put "the right man in the right place," for all the work 

 in that place during summer, — namely, the skilled forester in the 

 growing plantations and woodlands. There are, no doubt, some opera- 

 tions outside the wood, but they are not very numerous, which 

 fall more appropriately under the surpervision and personal admi- 

 nistration of the forester, such as transplanting, harvesting bark 

 after having been peeled, &c., but on the whole, the scene of greatest 



