280 MANAGEMENT OF FOKEST-TREES 



elongated striplings, scarcely able to sustain tlieir own weight. 

 And now a thinning commences, but, it must be observed, not 

 till the trees are of sufficient size to repay by the bark, and by 

 their own substance as poles, the outlay for tiie process. As the 

 trees increase in stature many of the firs are removed, and the 

 trees begin to breathe ; but the tonnentor has not yet relin- 

 quished his office. The forest pruner, guided by no better prin- 

 ciples of practice than uniformity of distance and symmetry of 

 form, commences his operations ; with ill-directed labour the 

 very life-giving organs of the tree are torn away, or at least the 

 branches by whicli those organs, the leaves, are to be produced 

 and borne. As you ramble through svich a plantation the eye is 

 wearied by the ever occurring semblance of ghost-like trees — 

 stereotyped editions of effeminacy, if such a term can be applied 

 to the vegetable world. Here, with imperfect organs of the 

 respiratory and digestive processes, unduly excited in an elevated 

 temperature, scarcely agitated by the gales of heaven,* a most 

 important auxiliary, be it observed, in the healthy economy of 

 vegetable life, no wonder that an imperfect stability of constitu- 

 tion should be the result, and that, when the timber is applied to 

 the several purposes for which it would seem to be adapted, dis- 

 appointment and vexation should follow. And if such timber is 

 employed in situations where a free circulation of air cannot 

 constantly play around it, decay is doubly rapid, from circum- 

 stances that I shall attempt to explain. In a horizontal section 

 of an oak of considerable age, the concentric layers of wood 

 forming its substance can readily be separated by the eye into 

 two distinct portions, the brown centre or duramen, termed by 

 Avorkmen the spine ; and the external layers or alburnum, or sap- 

 wood. As far as vitality is concerned, either in its own substance 

 or by contributing to the other portions of the tree, the duramen 

 may be said to be inert. Various secreted deposits, peculiar to 

 its substance, have stopped all circulation of fluids, and rendered 



* I canuot here refrain from illustrating by a case in point, and one that 

 has frequently come under my own notice, the bad effects of securely 

 strapping up to a stake the whole length of a young tree. A lady, who is 

 evidently anxious to form an avenue of elms in the approach to her 

 mansion, has been at great unnecessary labour to supply every tree with a 

 huge pole, to which the tiny elm is securely bound even to the verij top of 

 its leader. I need not say that every year witnesses many deaths, and I 

 think I shall escape the imputation of exaggeration when I add, that at 

 the present rate of progress, supposing the present trees to survive, which 

 is very doubtful, several lifetimes must be consumed ere anything like a 

 tree can be produced. Negative evidence of a forcible character, as illus- 

 trating the baneful effects of such a system, is furnished by the fact that 

 several vacancies have been filled up with trees of considerable stature, and 

 in which the strapping process has not been deemed necessary, aud which 

 appear to be progressing favourably. 



